


a foxhole collection: on possibilities and digressions

by Saul



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Gen, M/M, Multi, heavy on the alternate universes, warnings vary chapter by chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:52:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 38,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7308337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saul/pseuds/Saul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>throughout various moments in time, the universe maintains its constants: Neil Josten and Andrew Minyard live out of each other's pockets, Riko Moriyama has no happy ending, and the Foxes do their best with what they have.</p><p>( a large collection of prompts & their respective responses. )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. neil josten goes to the dentist

**Author's Note:**

> cheers, friends! visit me at [unkingly](http://unkingly.tumblr.com/) if you like.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompts: Wymack putting his foot down as dad and taking Neil to the dentist, and the Foxes living it up at the aftermath.

“We’re here. Get out.”

Neil’s eyes searched the neat, official-looking building they’d pulled up to. 

The abrupt shadows at the down-turned corners of his mouth accused,  _this isn’t an Exite._

“It isn’t Exite,” Wymack granted him, “because you have all you could need from Exite.”

“I don’t need anything from here, either.”

Not patient or gentle, but simply, bluntly exasperated, “Neil. You’ve been rubbing at your jaw for the past five months. When was the last time you went to a dentist?”

The shadows at the corners of his mouth deepened.

Wymack’s eyebrows climbed to meet his receding hairline. They had a ways to go, but as always, Neil managed to inspire greatness.

“High school?” Wymack proposed. That was only four years ago. Not good, but not awful.

Neil remained silent.

Wymack shifted in his driver’s seat to face him properly. Voice a bit strained, “Middle school?” 

“Coach,” Neil said, “I don’t need to see the dentist. My teeth are fine. I brush twice a day, as directed.”

“– Jesus, Neil, no wonder your jaw’s been giving you trouble.” Even if he wouldn’t admit it, the rubbing and wincing were dead give-aways. Wymack might not have raised a child, but he could tell when his players were in pain, and Neil, amazing compartimentalization skills or not, was in pain. “There’s more to dentistry than keeping your teeth clean.”

“You’re a dentist, Coach?” Neil threw back, voice so even it was experience alone that told Wymack he was being sassed.

“Don’t give me lip,” he said, his own tone hardening in what Dan affectionately called his grumpy dad voice. Once upon a time, it might have scared Neil into listening to him; as it was, it only made him hunker further down into his seat. It was progress, but not necessarily helpful for Wymack’s current attempts at cleaning up the mess Neil’s history left him in. “I’ve already scheduled your appointment, and the school’s agreed to help cover the bill. They’re expecting you, and you’re not disappearing on them.”

Neil didn’t look at him, but his frown slipped into an outright scowl.

(The school had agreed to no such thing. Wymack’s bank account, which typically supported a family of one, had.)

“Neil Josten,” Wymack growled. “Move it. Now.”

“Yes, Coach,” Neil muttered, and opened the door with more force than necessary. 

In the lobby while they waited for a room to free up, Wymack caught him texting Andrew. Really, that was fine. He’d already scheduled Andrew’s appointment for the next week – that kid ate far too many sweets to have any hope of escaping cavities.

* * *

He really needed to watch his mouth.

“Neil? Would you like some water?”

“Nope,” he said.

“Are you sure? You’ve been staring at Dan’s mug for five minutes now.”

Had he?

Oh.

He had to watch his mouth. He had to play it cool.

“Nope,” he repeated. 

Nailed it.

_Neiled it._

“Why is he laughing?” Matt asked Renee.

“He’s really out of it.”

“He’s right here,” Neil said, about himself. This also struck him as funny, though his face was beginning to throb from stretching up. Right. That was why he needed to watch his mouth: it now lacked four teeth, and was swelled something awful, and also contained a traitorous tongue that would undoubtedly run away on him if he didn’t pay attention. 

(Too bad paying attention was very, very difficult. He could manage maybe one thing; he decided, in a fit of brilliance, to mind his tongue.)

A camera clicked. Neil turned his head to see Nicky and his phone five feet from the couch he laid on.

“Hey!” He said. It struck him as garbled, like he was talking with a mouthful of cotton.

“Neil, buddy,” Nicky said, and pulled out of his range to do something with the picture, “I’m sorry, but this is gold.”

“You better be sending that to the rest of us, Hemmick,” Allison said.

“Oh, it’s going on instagram, don’t you worry.”

Neil frowned.

“Why don’t I have an instagram?”

“You do,” Nicky answered, distracted with his typing. “We made you one last month.”

“But it’s not mine,” Neil emphasized. 

Nicky turned the phone around and showed him a box for typing. It was, kindly, clear. “You want to caption it yourself?”

Yes, he did. 

So he did, and then he handed it back, nice and kind. See, he was watching his mouth.

Half the Foxes gathered around Nicky to read what he’d wrote, which made him feel a bit nervous. But then Matt breathed, “Holy shit,” and Dan smiled with, “Reads like poetry,” and he felt pretty self-satisfied about whatever it was he’d managed. Something about Nicky being an asshole for taking advantage of the incapacitated, he thought. Maybe. The keys had been uncooperative, and his fingers were clumsy.

Good thing his family was around, he mused, or he’d have to mind his back as well as his mouth, and he definitely didn’t have the capacity for both right then.

“Aw, Neil,” Dan cooed. “That’s really sweet. And a little sad. But mostly sweet. We’ll always be here for you.”

Aw, fuck.

He really needed to watch his mouth.

“I really need to watch my mouth,” he told himself.

“You never do,” Kevin told him. He sounded fond. Maybe.

Nicky grinned at Kevin and Kevin scowled back, so Neil thought he was right on the fond front.

Since they were being fond, he told Kevin, “You’re such an ass. And you’re wrong about a quarter turn helping a back-handed pass. The half turn adds much more power.”

“Oh, shit,” Matt crowed, “it’s gonna get real.”

Kevin told him he was wrong, but really, Kevin was wrong, so Neil waved a clumsy hand around the couch’s side in search of who else he was fond of. He was fond of all of them, honestly, he’d already established that, but – ah. There. He grasped a black pant leg and gave it a tug.

“I’m Aaron,” the Minyard told him.

“Oh,” Neil said, disappointed.

“Andrew!” Nicky called, at last finished with his phone. “Neil wants you!”

“Don’t tell him that,” Neil hissed, or tried to. It might have been more of an embarrassed yelp, his mouth not closing enough for a hiss. “Nicky, seriously, some things you don’t have to say.”

“Uh-huh, sure.”

To be fair, Andrew swiftly appeared in the doorway after that. He had a cup of ice water.

“Thanks,” Neil chirped, much happier after he had something to cool down his burning throat. Andrew had to help him sit up to drink it, but there weren’t any complaints to be made about that.

Matt muttered in defense of Renee, “Okay, you just said you weren’t thirsty.”

Since he was watching his mouth, he didn’t reply. He leaned heavier on Andrew’s arm, gaze roving the gathered Foxes, and felt pretty damn content.

(He was still mad at Wymack for dragging him to the dentist, but while he felt like this, he supposed he could forgive him.)

“Neil Josten,” Dan sighed at him. “You are impossible.”

Around a mouthful of water and amid a cry from Allison to not dribble all over their couch, he chirped, “Yep.”


	2. neil josten gets a phone call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: andreil & "call me now. it's urgent."
> 
> ( set a few years post-canon. )

What the _fuck_ did that mean?

It meant Neil stood in the middle of his team’s dealer rambling an answer to an inane question and, ignoring both the dealer’s sigh and the flash of cameras as journalists crowded to ask what was wrong, walked straight out of the press conference.

As they’d arrived in team vans and Neil hadn’t the keys to any (and they were in the underground parking garage: there was no way he’d have signal), it took ducking into an empty room, unlocking a window, and shimmying along the building’s gratiutious siding to find a ledge big enough to sit on. Once there, it was a phone flipped open and speeddial pressed, and three heart-stopping rings before Andrew picked up.

“Yeah?”

Quickly, Neil swallowed his relief. ‘Call soon’ might not have been much for others, but he’d never heard anything close to it from Andrew Minyard. Ten years together, four with a shared apartment, one grease fire and one aborted (now scarred) burglar, and never one call or text about a problem. Andrew’s relaxed tone didn’t, Neil convinced himself, mean anything. If someone was holding a gun to his head– if they’d taken his phone, handed it back to him only for him to answer- no, no, Andrew would never consent, he’d sooner–

Taking a hold of panic and funneling it into something productive, Neil very calmly asked, “If you can’t speak freely, tell me about your day.”

A pause.

“You’re so fucking dramatic, Josten.”

Neil’s head hit the building’s side. Hard.

“Andrew,” he exhaled, “what the hell?”

“The problem solved itself,” Andrew said, his lack of concern belied by the pick up in his response time. He was talking faster. He understood he’d made Neil panic. It was sort of an apology. “Go back to your press conference. Bishara came pretty close to ripping out his hair when you left.”

“Knox’ll calm him down.” A beat. Not yet ready to be placated but willing to take a detour to the conversation they’d have to have: “You were watching?”

Smooth and transparent as glass, Andrew said, “I can always hang up.”

Absently kicking his heel against the cement ledge, Neil snorted and, after enjoying the unhappy silence on the other end, cut to the chase.

“Not before you tell me what the problem _was_.”

“It’s not a problem anymore.”

That was peculiar. Frowning, Neil edged, “In eight minutes and twenty-five seconds, it’s been fully solved?”

“Yes.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

Silence.

Neil ran a mental check-list on every possible cause it could have been. Andrew’s team? No, they didn’t have any pressing games for two weekends. Aaron? No, he was in the midst of clinicals. Nicky? No… 

“Stop.”

The train of thought neatly derailed.

“Just tell me,” Neil finally sighed. He’d been too panicked at the message; playing a guessing game didn’t sound appealing right then.

Yet another pause.

If Neil didn’t know better, he’d say Andrew felt embarrassed.

“Sir ate a tootsie wrapper.”

Neil– had not heard that right. Or maybe he had. Wait. To be sure: “Sir Fat Cat.” 

“McCatterson,” Andrew finished without missing a beat. 

Okay. He’d heard right. That didn’t clear anything up. Puzzled, Neil asked, “And?”

“It passed.”

“The tootsie wrapper?”

“Obviously,” Andrew said, “the tootsie wrapper, not Sir. We’d be having a pretty different conversation if it was the stupid cat that passed.”

One second, two, and then, lightbulb lighting up his brain, Neil asked, “Did you–?”  

Andrew hung up on him.

Which meant he had. He totally had. Andrew Minyard had gotten worried over their fat cat eating something he shouldn’t have.

 _You hung up on me_ , he texted right after he’d moseyed his way back into the empty conference room, window shut and locked behind him. _And you call me dramatic._

 _Shut up_ , came the reply. Then, before Neil returned the conference: _Buy more paper towels on your way back._


	3. andrew minyard maintains his reputation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: what did happen when someone burglared Neil and Andrew's apartment?

Nobody with taste would call it the Ritz, but Tri-Heights had its charms. For one, it was the only apartment building in the nice neighborhood that allowed pets of any shape or shape; for two, it was the unlikely residence to two rising Exy stars. The media wasn’t supposed to report on that, technically, but fans and the forums they frequented were never exclusively tied to what reporters told them.

Reggie didn’t know a thing about Exy. She hated sports, a hold-over from poor experiences with a high school gym teacher. All she knew about Tri-Heights was that it kept a crowd well-off enough to keep some pricey items laying around, but not well-off enough for the back door to stay locked when it was supposed to. Now, she wasn’t _stupid_ \- she’d done some homework. She knew room 413’s residents left for days at a time. Their leaving rarely overlapped with one another, but on one sunny weekend in October, they had.

The back door opened without much fuss, the rickety bare metal stairwells as free from cameras as ever. She tugged her hoodie low anyway, shrugging her bag higher onto her shoulder as she took the stairs two at a time. 

In and out, just like always. It’d be quick. Living in a place like this – hell, whatever she took, they wouldn’t even miss.

Tri-Heights wasn’t the Ritz, so its apartments still operated on shitty replaceable locks. Picking them was no issue. When she slipped in - quietly closing and locking the door behind her, just in case someone else had the bright idea to follow her - she took in a clean kitchen and relatively bare walls, the jugs of protein whey on the fridge and bowl of mandarins on the counter. The bedroom doors were left open and the living room was populated by a very, very nice television, two lamps, two beanbags, and one love seat. The smell of cat dandruff hit her before the furry culprit peeked around the bedroom door, its green eyes absolutely gorgeous and, Reggie swore, vaguely puzzled.

“Hey, pretty kitty,” she whispered to it, admitting the living room was a lost cause (maybe she’d come back with Gerard, he’d help her lift that good looking TV) and moving on to the bathroom, “how are you, huh? I’m just visiting, don’t you mind me.”

The bathroom was nice. It would’ve been nicer if it’d had a few watches or jewelry kits. The guys that lived here weren’t bad on the eyes - and they were obviously together, she never saw either of them bring around a girl, so she’d thought – okay, she’d stereotyped - but damn it, weren’t gay men supposed to be fashionable? Where were the shiny, pricey trinkets? There was just a whole lot of hair-care products, deodorant and leather bands. She’d say it was kinky, but she’d seen the pasty guy who hadn’t left his goth phase behind that lived here. He was buff, but working out didn’t change the fact he definitely had a pretentious and duck-lipped MySpace profile somewhere in his internet history.

“Men are useless,” she murmured to the cat, backing out to the bedroom. 

The cat – and oh boy, was it a big one, it was practically a goddamn sphere - blinked its pretty green eyes at her and, once she’d passed the threshold, got up to twine around her legs. It was fat enough to be a problem, but Reggie couldn’t begrudge it: the act eased up the tension strung along her shoulders, reminding her that no, nobody was home, nobody was coming home, she was doing just fine, this job might be a bust but she wouldn’t be found. 

Animals were great. 

The bedroom was a bit messier. Dirty clothes littered the closet’s floor, creeping out in stinky accusation at the corners. Bright but worn orange interrupted a sea of monotone colored clothing, the orange’s fox-paw prints matched by a massive Palmetto State poster and several smaller flags over an unmade bed. Two older Exy racquets and a bag of spare balls stood by the dresser. A cork-board had a sports-themed calendar with its dates jam-packed and a nice smattering of candid and smiling shots of the same group of people. The nightstand had a half-full ash tray, the clock blinked  **6:01 A.M.** , and there was seriously nothing of worth for her to lift.

She wanted to take something that looked vaguely sentimental to spite the residents, but there wasn’t even _that._

Maybe some of the photos? God, no, she couldn’t be that petty.

A lump under the blankets moved as she rifled through the drawers. She jumped, heart in her throat - she’d thought that was a pillow! - but when another, greyer cat stuck its fluffy face out from the sheets, she let her anxiety hiss out in a curse. 

“There must be something,” she begged the new feline. It was a little less fat than the tortoiseshell. But only by a little. “Laptops? Tablets? Pot? Come on, what self-respecting rich gay boy doesn’t have a spare MacBook laying around?”

The drawers had nothing but more clothes and more leather. A pair of black boots in the closet looked nice, but she didn’t recognize the brand, and the soles were too worn to be of any use.

(Plus, they weren’t her size.)

She’d dallied enough. She’d just have to come back with Gerard for the TV. 

Standing from the closet with a bit-back growl of frustration, she once again shrugged her bag higher on her shoulder and turned around to a faceful of black.

Until she stood to her full height, anyway. Then the blond hair topping the black came to her collarbone. But that wasn’t what had her attention.

The knife at her gut, that had her attention.

“Holy fuck,” she gasped, the words jumping out before she could think to stop them, “you’re fucking crazy!”

(Her mom always had said her mouth would get her killed.)

He didn’t flinch. The knife backed her into the closet door, the flimsy frame rattling as she pressed against it.

“This is my apartment,” he said.

“No shit!” Hands up and palms out, she supposed she sounded surprised. She was surprised. She was very, very surprised, and not a little bit scared. How hadn’t she heard him come in? “Uh, I– was- just, I’m– listen, man, listen, I’m really sorry, I wasn’t– I didn’t mean-”

“– to get caught?” 

“Dude, alright, alright, I’m, shit, I’m so sorry, really, you want me to beg? I’ll beg. I’m so, so sorry, I swear I didn’t touch nothing.”

The knife tip dug into her stomach. She gave up coherency and babbled.

Eventually he said, “You’re a nobody.”

“Yes, no, it’s, I’m alone, yeah, just me–” fuck, wait, was that a good or bad thing? He was going to gut her, he looked like he’d gut her, he wouldn’t even care about the mess. “But I got a family, alright, I got– my mom, she’s waiting on me,” she was doing no such thing, Reggie hadn’t seen her good for nothing mom in years, “a little brother, come on, please, please, fuck, just don’t kill me, I swear, I’ll never tell anybody ‘bout this.”

He seemed to need a moment to process that she was just a petty criminal. It was barely a second’s worth of hesitation, but it was too much for her nerves. 

She panicked. She made a run for it.

The knife tip dragged across her side - that shit was sharp! - and the fat cat yowled when she stumbled across it, but she made it to the door without the nutjob goth filling her with holes. Then she was out, running like the devil was on her tail. She’d never moved so fast. She nearly beefed it on the stairs.

When she hit the ground outside, she hit it running.

When friends mused on working over Tri-Heights, she told them to stay the fuck away, that it wasn’t just another well-off apartment complex, it had a fucking batshit serial murderer and his probably equally crazy boyfriend living in it. The gash along her side didn’t scar, but she swore she could still feel it. 

She never met him again - she stayed the fuck away from Tri-Heights, because she wasn’t some damn hypocrite - but the guy’s _eyes_ , how willing he was to put a knife in her while standing in some nice but empty apartment, shit. She’d remember those til the day she died.


	4. andrew minyard does not grow old

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: Neil didn't return from Baltimore.
> 
> ( **warning:** depression, character death, cancer. )

Time flies in a grey world.

The second year began with a bang and ended in a whimper: a disqualified disappointment and better luck next year, a few passive aggressive comments on promises not being met by black and red representatives, but of course, of course, it was understandable, it wasn’t their fault their recruitment was so low and a key player disappeared just before the end.

The third year put in a valiant effort at sparking interest: no trophy in the Fox case but hope, vindictive and sangurine, for the next year. The others scrambled to rekindle the fire. Andrew felt neither admiration nor envy.

The fourth year gasped its last, no energy left to even attempt a fight.

The fifth year was a summary for his future: deathly silent.

Then he graduated, Aaron and him, the-last-to-stand, or at least the last in Andrew’s world. His brother went to medical school. Andrew did not.

Renee took a road trip across the States. Andrew did not.

Nicky returned to Germany. Andrew stayed in South Carolina.

Kevin went on for the professional Exy league. Andrew, at the behest of none, became a night guard for the local science museum.

Work wasn’t so different from school. Therapy wasn’t sponsored or required, and Bee hadn’t the room to schedule him. She referred him to colleagues he never saw. 

The sixth year came.

The seventh year went.

Katelyn and Aaron invited him for Christmas. He went.

Nicky’s emails, slowly, petered out. He barely noticed.

Kevin appeared at his doorstep in between seasons for a weekend. He barely noticed him arrive, let alone leave.

The eighth year came.

Katelyn invited him for Christmas. He went.

The ninth year went.

Katelyn invited him for Christmas. He doesn’t respond.

The museum had budget cuts. He transferred to a warehouse’s night watch.

The tenth year went.

The eleventh year went.

The twentieth. The twenty-fourth. It went, it went, it went.

On the thirty-third, he developed a persistent cough. Doctors told him it was a late stage of lung cancer, and if he didn’t quit smoking it would kill him within the year.

The thirty-fourth year never came and he, at last, went.


	5. david wymack doesn't get a break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: pacific rim au.

“Sir, the simulation predicted a synchronization less than fifty percent under the best conditions for those two.”

“Stressful situations bring people together, haven’t you heard that?”

“Sir–”

“Day’s still unresponsive, and we’ll lose Bronze Dealer altogether if we don’t get them some back-up. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, lieutenant, but Minyard and Josten are the only fit pilots we have left.”

“You’re not wrong, sir.”

“Thank you.”

“Respectfully, it’s just–”

“I want them in that robot and deployed stat, lieutenant.”

“Y… es, sir.”

A Mark-3 and combat veteran besides, the Vicious Aegis had seen better days, which was also to say that it matched the worn-out world around it. A sturdy juggernaut of a machine, it was built for defense and to play bait more than straight offense. But it wouldn’t have been a jaeger if it wasn’t somewhat versitile; moreover, neither it, its pilots nor its base would stand long if it didn’t make a charge.

The kaiju was a grey shelled crab the size of a small island, its pincers fit to snap an barge in half. It had the Bronze Dealer pinned against the fortification wall, its softer parts pulled under its impenetrable shell whenever Wilds or Boyd managed a shot. If they retreated to lead it out, however, it dove for the wall; if they went forward, it hid; if they slipped up, it would rip them apart.

It was a stalemate. It would’ve been a fair stand-off if the kaiju hadn’t far more energy and, as evidenced by the last manuever that had cost the Bronze Dealer its left arm, more patience.

“This isn’t a game,” Josten told his makeshift partner as they strapped in, alarms blaring outside the cockpit, “we lose, and we’re all finished.”

“Oh, Neil,” he threw back, gloved hand raised to tap on his temple, “don’t you worry about what’s out there. Concentrate on what’s in here.”

Well as he worked with Kevin Day, Andrew Minyard was not known for his versitility in partners. Qualified as he was in operations, Neil Josten had never successfully matched with anyone.

(Wymack was, perhaps, desperate.)

Given the all clear from the ground, the Vicious Aegis came to life. A collective breath was held from those watching.

After nearly sixty seconds of silence, it took its first step. Then its second. And its third.

By the time it reached the hatch, it moved like a dream.

It left applause in its wake; in the radar room, the lieutenant turned a disbelieving face toward Wymack. He gave her a grim but satisfied smile.

“Jesus, Day, I’m glad to see you,” Boyd’s strained voice crackled over the radio, “we’re at critical levels. Flank it.”

“No Day,” came the reply, “sorry.”

Wilds’ voice cut in with, “Josten?! I’d thought the General was lying– Minyard, you still there?” 

“For now.”

“Huh. Miracles do happen. Still glad to see you. We’d laid into its left; it should be bleeding something bad on the back.”

“On it.”

No hesitation. No second-guessing. They moved like a unit for the first and not the last time, their read-outs stable and sync beyond adequate. 

(What anyone below the General’s rank didn’t know was: long hours in night practice and simulations. They began upon Kevin Day’s insistence and continued in fierce determination and terrible fury after what had been an attempt on the administration’s part to rekindle one of the best jaeger pairs - Riko and Kevin - turned into an absolute disaster.)

(What anyone outside the cockpit didn’t know was: that first minute had been a slide into a Baltimore basement and California home, a flash of family in name alone, and the absolute understanding of betrayal and what they wouldn’t dream or think of doing to one another.)


	6. neil josten does not learn his lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: Neil has appendicitis and, being Neil, tries to tough it out.

“An open appendectomy,” Andrew told him after hours in the waiting room and hours longer until Neil woke up on a plastic-y, firm hospital bed, “is not fine.”

“I didn’t know it was that bad,” Neil replied, with the foggy thought that he’d gone through surgery, wasn’t he supposed to be left in peace on waking? It was a quick thought, and quickly banished; that Andrew was the first thing he saw after his eyes focused again was a bigger balm than anything like silence could’ve possibly been. 

He still felt hot and over-stuffed, skin fit to burst. That might have been the drugs. That was definitely the drugs.

“You need to re-evaluate your pain tolerance,” Andrew said. “Should I get you a standardized visual chart for the future? You can pick which smiley face you’d think Nicky would make if he felt whatever you do.”

It hadn’t been—

Okay. No. Put like that and after an emergency trip to the operation room, Neil admitted the pain had been pretty bad.

But only at the end, after his fever had spiked. Before, it’d been… some stomach cramps, sure, but nothing awful. Maybe he couldn’t eat as much without his intestines revolting against the rest of him. It was the summer practice season. Moreover, it was the twin’s last summer practice season with the Foxes, and as Captain (and in pursuit of another trophey with the twins’ names attached), Neil needed the Foxes to go far. Abdominal cramps weren’t going to get in the way of that.

That day, Andrew had knocked their helmets together before they went out for the practice scrimmage. Neil’d already been coated in sweat, but he’d worked all morning to convince him he was fine to practice. 

_Your funeral_ , Andrew had said. _Don’t expect me to come to your rescue when you collapse._

Except he had when Sheena caught Neil in the stomach with her racquet and pain had exploded so thoroughly through his body, he hadn’t even been able to chide her for making such an obviously illegal block. He hadn’t been able to because he’d been on the ground, curled up and gasping,  lungs constricted and vision blurred.

He’d blacked out around the time someone called the ambulance, but he hadn’t missed how close Andrew came to shoving Sheena’s racquet down her throat.

Now he saw the pinch between Andrew’s eyebrows and, with clumsy hands, reached to snag his. That replaced the pinch with an eye-roll, but he allowed it, their fingers intertwined on thin blue-green sheets.

“The doctors recommend another day here,” he was told.

Sometime between one breath and the next, Neil’s eyes had fallen closed. He opened them again.

“Just recommend?”

“After your drugs wear off,” Andrew said, vooice flat,“I’m going to get you the smiley chart, and if Nicky wouldn’t pick an eight, we can go.”

The doctors wouldn’t like that.

But, really, it worked out fine for Neil.

( _That said_ , they ended up staying another day.)


	7. neil josten and kevin day are not to be trusted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: vampire au.
> 
> ( **warning:** referenced violence. )

“So it started with Riko?”  


“No, his father. Kengo.”

“And his uncle.”

“Tetsuji. Yes.”

“So, once again: the Moriyamas.”

“Not all related by blood,” added a thin voice from the backseat.

“Thought you weren’t contributing to this conversation, little rabbit,” Andrew sneered.

“Guys, come on,” Nicky protested without heat. Hands tight on the wheel, he cut another glance at the passenger seat – the striker refused to meet his eyes as he answered the questions, his gaze set on the headlights jumping over Columbia’s pothole filled road. The dashboard lights made his shirt-front glisten wetly. Even with the windows cracked for air, the stench of iron was so thick Nicky was sure he’d be sick again before they reached the house. He was usually all for sharing, but this night had taken it too far. He’d never wanted to know this much about his teammates’ peculiar dietary habits. 

To be fair, he hadn’t known he didn’t want to know until– oh, thirty minutes ago, when he’d happened upon the gory mess in the club’s back alley.

In the terse silence to follow, he asked Kevin, voice thin for a reason entirely separate from Neil’s, “Shouldn’t you have better control? You’ve been with– you were with Riko for ages, this can’t be a new development for you.”

Unlike the rest of them. It was definitely a new development for the rest of them.

Aaron still hadn’t said a thing. Nicky worried, briefly, that he might be in shock. You could be in shock when nothing had directly happened to you, right?

“I have perfect control,” Kevin stiffly replied. After a pause, he glanced to the backseat with a pointed, unhappy-but-not-pissed glare, “Until someone goes into a frenzy.”

Shirt front similarly wet and chin smudged in dried red, Neil’s cheeks looked too full, like he’d tried to eat too much at once and couldn’t chew. He stared back at Kevin, both unimpressed and, once again, unresponsive.

The reminder of food made Nicky’s stomach jump. “We’re going to pull over again,” he told his passengers, voice choked, and did, tires sliding on the roadside’s slippery gravel. 

As he pushed the door opened and clambered out before he ruined Andrew’s car’s up-holstery with alcohol-drenched ice cream, he heard Kevin demand, “What did you expect to happen after mixing medications? The suppressents can’t be taken with anything but blood.”

“I didn’t expect to be drugged,” Neil coldly replied.

“Sorry,” Nicky gasped from the roadside. Neil didn’t acknowledge it.

He could, Nicky thought, kill them all. Well. He could kill them all except Kevin. Easily. So, so easily. He’d seen him do it at the club, a busboy losing his arm when he’d gone for a swing at Neil’s face in the back alley. When Andrew’d demanded to know where he was and Nicky, Aaron and Kevin burst out the backdoor to find him, something about the blood and Neil’s hiss over the busboy’s collapsed body had set off the other vampire in their group. 

Because that was a thing, apparently. Another vampire in their group. A first vampire, which made another vampire into being the other vampire.

Columbia trips involving people outside their group were always stressful.

They weren’t this stressful.

Oh, god. Columbia.

“We’re never going back to Eden’s Twilight,” Aaron muttered. His voice couldn’t decide which exact negative emotion it wanted to be, but it sampled from as many as it could.

“After tonight, would you want to go back?” Nicky asked, climbing back in and shakily shutting the door. “Fuck. I don’t even want to explain this one.”

“We won’t be explaining this one,” Andrew said. He said it like they had a choice, or he was working up a plan. Kevin watched him as if he did. That was weird. This was all weird. This went beyond weird. Why was he the only one startled by this? Kevin and Neil couldn’t be too surprised, but what about his cousins? 

Everything smelled like blood.

Andrew said, “Eyes forward and drive, Nicky.” Trying not to take a deep breath, Nicky did.


	8. jeremy knox lives a simple life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: wild west-era centaur au, featuring Jean and Jeremy. based on the Hotblood! webseries.

“Ugh, smells like wet horse.”

“Thanks,” Jean deadpanned, and flicked Jeremy with a sodden tail when he passed.  


Jeremy jumped, if only because that, _that_ was a new development – that was almost a _joke,_ albeit one that resulted in a streak of mud across his shirt front. He pulled the splattered fabric from his chest with an exaggerated frown, but where Jean’s expression didn’t crack, Jeremy’s did. In no time flat, even. Jean didn’t look anymore surprised by the big grin sent his way.

Jean rarely looked much of anything besides displeased or stressed if he wasn’t drunk, to be fair, but things were changing. He’d only arrived to dusty, sprawling Silverthorne two months prior at the behest of Jeremy’s old buddy from the police academy, Kevin Day, as well as an honest ( _to a point,_ god rest Tony’s poor, reckless soul) opening in Jeremy’s neck of the woods. Though he took to the general lawlessness of a way-point town better than Jeremy expected, Jean still clung to the high-and-mighty city-slicker attitude. It didn’t win him many friends at the saloons or rodeo, but then, his top friend was Sheriff. Maybe he thought that was good enough.

More likely, Jeremy thought, Jean just plain didn’t know better than to act like he did. Kevin’d told him he’d ran deputy to Riko Moriyama in Boston. Now, Jeremy’d never gotten close to that piece of over-stuffed work, but you didn’t need ears in the walls to know Riko wasn’t much of the party type.

The first thing Jean said to him beyond hand-shakes and introductions had been, _Not many humans in this town.  
_

 _Maybe twenty percent of the populace,_  Jeremy had replied, amiable. He’d gotten the a lot since the train to California came through his miniature city. If this was a centaur town, what was a human doing as Sheriff? When Jean simply gazed at him without saying anything more, he’d taken it as an attempt at manners and said,  _I earned my badge fair and square, Jean. The people know me, they respect me_.

( _Heaven knew why._ )

Jean had nodded with a light frown. It was either he couldn’t understand why Jeremy brought that up or he didn’t believe him; at first Jeremy’d thought the latter, but he was beginning to suspect it was actually the former. Jean was a man– er, centaur- that needed proof for his respect, but he had an unwavering faith in the hierarchy that bordered creepy.

First time he saw the guy without a regulation cloak over his back, he’d wondered who in the world would put a whip and branding iron to a centaur, never mind a deputy. The **3**  was terribly conspicuous on his flank. But it wasn’t his business, and as Jean didn’t share, Jeremy didn’t ask.

What _was_ their (muddy) business was this: Leroy’s gang’s clay-walled fort, which passing cowboys remarked with their heavy Mexican accents  had suddenly gained quite a few buzzards and a mighty awful stench. The rain had washed away the latter, at least from the outside and immediate entrance. When they proceeded in - just the two of them; Leroy hadn’t caused trouble in ages -, Jeremy had a fair idea of what they’d find, and sure enough:

Smell, rain washed away. Bodies? Not as soluble. 

“Leroy?” He called, but it was no use. He’d called the same thing outside the very suspiciously unlocked doors.  


His new deputy trotted himself along the walls, hand over his gun, his back rigid and shoulders straight. If Jeremy hadn’t spent nearly every hour of the day with the guy, he would’ve thought Jean spotted something worth getting in a fit over.

By the time Jean made a full loop, Jeremy was sifting through the bodies for recognizable faces. It turned his stomach, the brutality that whoever’d done this had left behind, half bullets and half knife, but really, he’d seen worse, and at least it all seemed contained to Leroy’s gang. He retreated back to duck under the entrance’s awning after he’d checked them all, not that it mattered much: he was soaked.

_But…_

“No Leroy,” Jeremy told Jean’s inquisitive look.   


“Figures,” Jean grumbled back. “No civilians?”  


“None I know.”  


Jean’s right hoof clacked irritably against white stone. He was a sleek fellow, insofar as centaur went; all lean lines and coiled power, his coat a grey-dappled black. His human half looked a lot meaner, but Jeremy was learning looks meant little when it came to Jean Moreau. 

Under and through the rain’s downpour pierced a scream: both policemen whirled to the sound, and both immediately identified it for what it had to be: a horse startled into distress. More specifically, _most likely,_  Jeremy’s horse. 

Jean beat him out, his gun in hand; a good thing, too, because if he had hesitated a second he would’ve been the one with a bullet in his brain, not the bandit that had untied and struck Jeremy’s horse into racing away, her white coat already a speck climbing through the hills. 

Except there were more of bandits, all human and all scattered in the underbrush – Jeremy snagged an arm around Jean’s back and yanked him toward cover. 

“Where’s Leroy?” Followed them in. Jean cut him a glance, but Jeremy shook his head. There were far, far too many of them for two to take on. “You coppers have him?”  


“That’s the sheriff!” Another yelled.   


“Oh, good,” the first replied. “Two pathetic birds, one stone.”  


Jean reared back to his hind legs for one brief burst of agitation, which was also a _new development_ but not one Jeremy had time to think about. 

“There’s a back door,” he said, racking his mind for ideas. They had fifteen bullets each. “By my estimate, there’s twenty of them. We can’t take on that number.”  


“We could manage it,” Jean insisted. “They might disappear after this.”  


“If they come to town, we’ll manage it,” Jeremy returned. “As is, this is a turf war. Not our business.”  


“Knox–”  


“Jean,” he cut in. “We need to get out with our lives intact. That’s most important.”  


His jaw snapped shut with an audible click. This time, both his hoof and his tail flicked in irritation. Was he getting under his deputy’s skin that much, or was he just reading the signs better? He didn’t know. He’d think about it later. Right then, he had to think about how they’d get _out_  – Jean could out-run them easy, especially with the rain’s cover, but without his horse…

With any other centaur - like Laila or Alvarez - he might’ve asked for a distasteful but necessary favor. With Jean, who despised being touched in the friendliest manners, he hesitated. He mentally ran through every other option.

Jean waited him out for a few heartbeats, but there was no telling when the bandits would rush the fort. 

“Well, hurry up,” Jean snapped. Jeremy blinked back. He shrugged, an uncomfortable gesture purely by it being him; if Jeremy looked he couldn’t actually find any real discomfort. “Get on.”  


“Saddle up?” Jeremy tried to joke, and winced at himself. Jean didn’t reply, simply turned so the broadside of his horse half faced him. He even gave Jeremy a hand up when he slipped on wet fur. The very second he was seated properly, Jean warned him to _hold on_ and, a flurry of iron-shoed hooves, rounded the fort’s walls to its back exit.  


Jeremy ended up clinging to Jean’s waist as they tore out amid surprised bullets and shouts. After they crested the hill and began the much slower process down its mucky slope, Jean wheezed that he’d appreciate Jeremy lightening up on his legs. Jeremy, pleased to be alive and not at all harmed, apologized and did so.

Jean didn’t tell him to ease up on his waist or get off, though. Since he didn’t bring it up, neither did Jeremy. 

It was a policy that’d worked so far. Maybe it gave both of them all they needed. Maybe–

Well. First they had to get back, and Jean’d insist on writing the report immediately, and Jeremy would miss his bed but oblige in staying, because if he didn’t, Jean would be up all night doing both of theirs.

If no bandits came knocking on their door come noon, he’d drag Jean to the saloon for a celebratory, _we’re alive!_ round. Jean always seemed to come closest to smiling when Jeremy was, another unspoken policy that worked out. Really, it wasn’t a supply he ran low on, so it worked mighty fine.


	9. andrew minyard and the terrible no good very bad year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: "so when I was a kid I had this babysitter who sat me down one rainy day and told me if you make a wish on a dry pebble and placed it on a dry patch of land and a raindrop hits it, your wish will come true. now imagine if someone told this to Andrew or Neil when they were kids."
> 
> ( **warning:** domestic/emotional abuse, neglect. )

One of his foster siblings, a younger girl with curly hair pulled back by bright elastic bands, told him the story. Dry pebble, dry land, make a wish, apply a raindrop, and the wish comes true. At ten years old, Andrew thought himself close to being an adult – two more years, and he’d definitely be as mature as the grown-ups he knew – and dismissed her words as the dreamy thinking of an eight year old who didn’t understand how the world worked. You could make them, but wishes didn't  _come true._

The girl was transferred out within the month, anyway, due to something about the parents not wanting girls any longer. It had more to do with the wife’s jealousy over her husband buying an eight year old ice cream. Andrew knew that because the wife, Suzy, had dragged  _him_ off for ice cream not a day later, had a break down in the parlor when he didn’t choose fast enough, and then spent the car ride back scolding him for making a fool out of her.  _She can be unreasonable,_ which was a thought Andrew had that reaffirmed just how adult he was. (It was what her husband said, whispered into a phone to the social workers about taking away the eight year old and keeping girls from their house. Andrew left off the part where he added,  _but it’s alright, aren’t we all?_ )

It rained a week after the girl left. A heavy downpour, like the sky had its haired pulled out and couldn’t stop crying about it. That thought reminded him of the girl, and he didn’t have much to do but watch TV with the wife, so he excused himself and went to the back porch to find a dry stone.

He wondered if it counted if he caught a raindrop on his finger and dropped it himself. It probably didn’t, but it was a stupid story, anyway, so rather than rip up the porch roof, he did that. He hesitated with a drop balanced on his fingertip over the stone, eyebrows furrowed, because of course he’d been so caught up in the  _how_ he’d forgotten the  _what_ to wish for. The raindrop trembled on his skin, glistening dully in the dim lighting. It slithered, unbidden, off his finger - he tried to jerk it away, but that made it fall faster. When it dripped off, he scrambled for a wish, and found, his mind tangled up in the jealous wife’s breakdown and his promised treat thrown on the asphalt:

_A scoop of the best cookie dough ice cream._

It was a stupid wish, but it was the first thing that came to mind, and the drop hit the stone before he could take it back. 

When he realized he’d frozen and actually waited for the rock to turn into ice cream, he stood and kicked the stupid stone into the stupid rain so its stupid raindrop could join its stupid brothers and sisters. Then he’d tramped back inside, went to his room, curled under the sheets and ignored the wife screaming at her husband that she didn't  _have_ to do anything for the worthless brats they took in, why wouldn't  _he_ ever do anything, all his hours at work hadn’t stopped him with that  _girl_ , was he a  _pervert_?

The next day was Sunday, which was ironic given the day before hadn’t been called Rainday and the sun just barely came out behind the clouds. For his only free day of the week, the husband decided to take Andrew to the local Exy game in a show of father-and-foster-son bonding, or something. 

The husband really wasn’t good with kids. He wanted to be, Andrew could tell, but he just didn’t know how to deal with simple honesty being plain, simple honesty.

Andrew obliged his discomfort with not saying a thing, even after they arrived at the Little League game and took their seats in the bleachers. It suited them both decently, though the husband grew awkward when others asked if Andrew’s brother or sister was playing. It hadn’t occurred to him that it wasn’t typical to bring a ten year old to a game he had no connection to – he just remembered his own childhood, and days in baseball stands alongside his father.

In any case, he tried not to look relieved when Andrew asked to go get something from the food stand. He gave Andrew money and told him to pick out whatever he wanted, so long as he came right back.

Little League did back-to-back games, and people milled about in between. The line for the ice cream cart was long, but that was alright. Andrew wasn’t in a hurry. Before he reached the front, though, another boy in one of the away team’s jerseys turned around and ran straight into him, his ice cream cone smeared along both their shirts. 

The kid lamented his lost ice cream first, his jersey second, and Andrew third. “Watch where you’re going!” He snapped.

The kid was a backliner in training (he’d learned what that meant today), but he also looked younger than Andrew. So, he replied: “ _You_ watch where you’re going. I was just standing here.”

“Then stand somewhere else!” The kid told him. “You’re in the way!”

Not liking the way a few adults were watching them, Andrew scowled at the kid, flicked more ice cream onto his jersey, and stomped away.

He meant to duck away under the bleachers and kick something until he forgot about how the stupid wish hadn’t even worked  _a day later_ with the cart  _right there_ , but a tall woman stopped him. In one hand, she had a cone with cookie dough ice cream; in the other, a squirming, embarrassed boy with a smeared jersey.

Andrew stuck his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and watched them both through his bangs.

“Abram,” the woman said, and gave her son a shake. “Apologize.”

“Sorry,” the kid muttered. When the woman gave him another small shake, he lifted his eyes and said, in a tone that bordered sincere, “ _Sorry_ I told you that you were in the way. I should’ve watched where I was going. Mom bought you some ice cream because you left before you could get any. Do you like cookie dough?”

Everybody liked cookie dough. Andrew accepted it with his own muttered, “Thanks.”

The woman eyed them both, something working behind her eyes. Andrew didn’t like the look - it made his stomach twist up and shoulders hunch higher. He tried to smooth both out, but they refused.

“You have half an hour until the game starts,” the mother told her son. “I’m going to fetch your spare jersey. Why don’t you two wait here?”

They didn’t have a choice, because apparently whatever she said was exactly what Abram would do. Andrew poked fun at him for it, but not for long, because he had ice cream to eat now that the mother was gone and, once the boy found out he didn’t know much about Exy, an excited nine-year-old explaining to him absolutely everything there was to know about the game. The woman took a long while to return, but Andrew saw her lurking by the concession stand. When she did show up to wrestle her kid into a new jersey with its bold white WESNINSKI on the back, she offered to sit with Andrew while Abram played. He glanced first to Abram, who looked as excited about Andrew watching as he did about playing, and then, well, whatever, she’d bought him ice cream, it was responsible to do what she asked. 

After she met with his foster father, who stammered gratitude for her taking care of him, and they stayed at the playground far past the wife’s curfew. Abram taught him some Exy tactics. He was good, but Andrew discovered when it came to blocking out shots with the brightly colored racquets, he could be better.

Rather than get annoyed at being beat, the kid tackled getting balls around him like a challenge. 

Andrew admitted to him before they parted that Exy wasn’t that bad. 

Abram babbled that maybe they’d meet again on court. 

“Only if you buy me another ice cream,” he told him.  “This time, the _best.”_

Abram laughed at him and agreed. 

All in all, it was a day so pleasant Andrew later convinced himself it was a dream.


	10. andrew minyard eats an alright burger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: biker au.

In the middle of a dusty nowhere outside a ramshackle _Blue Inn_ , a nobody with a newly filled stomach tucked away a worn map and straddled his motorbike’s blisteringly sun-warmed seat. His jacket’s back boasted about the _Free Foxes_ in a hand-sown orange and white blaze, as well as the states, towns and lives he’d left behind.   
  
One could tell he was a nobody given his being alone. Safe behind dirty, thick glass, patrons muttered into their beers about how the real owner of those patches wouldn’t ride solo. Only the waitress had ever even heard about the _Free Foxes_ , but she assured the regulars that this one showing up wouldn’t bring trouble. _He hadn’t talked to anybody ‘cause he’s on the run,_ she sniffed. He’d been in and out so quick, his lunch taken on the fly, the regulars found her words easy to swallow. As long as the fella sat in the parking lot, though, they weren’t breathing easy.

Stolen jacket or not, the guy’s ride was something else. A souped up Harley blacked out in all the right places, its bulk promised hell and a half on any to cross its path as much as any that tried to take it for a spin. Its pipes gleamed a mean silver, echoed by the stark **03** stenciled across the engine box. When he got on, a few snickered at how the biker’s toe-tips barely brushed the ground; the guy was obviously jacked, but a beast like that required leg. It looked as if the man had been, as men do, infatuated with its look and reckless about its power. Though some acknowledged it was impressive he could hold it up even at that tilt, one patron sneered, _but where’s his lady to hold him steady? Or maybe he’s got a man?_   
  
They said these things because they hadn’t felt etirely comfortable when he was _in_ the Blue Inn, but with him out there and them not, confidence returned.  
  
Thick glass or not, the side closest to the sparsely populated lot felt it when the engine woke up. Amazingly, he didn’t tip as he coasted to the driveway. In fact, he didn’t even wobble. There was no way he’d crash: it responded to him like a docile little lamb, though it was clearly once a Road King.  
  
Fun gone, the patrons lost interest and the leather-clad biker was quickly forgotten.  
  
Not oblivious to but uncaring of the Blue Inn’s opinion of him, Andrew waited for a truck to thunder past so he could turn onto the road. He was on his way to Santa Monica, same as the five other Free Foxes in town; he’d split from his crew for a solo cruise while they straightened out the motel bill. It was business as usual.  
  
Behind him, gravel crunched in the manner of someone attempting to skirt a tab or brawl. With the Blue Inn selling little more than cheap swill, that also was business as usual.  
  
The truck passed. Andrew’s bike rumbled into its turn.  
  
Andrew had spent too much time on the road to let a body crashing into his back swerve his wheel, but it was a near thing, and he didn’t resist snarling a, “The _hell_?” at his sudden, unwelcome passenger.  
  
“Drive,” the guy begged him, anxiety and terror tramped down under a crumbling veneer, “just, fucking drive!”  
  
Gravel crunched under more boots not nearly as desperate but no less hurried. Andrew caught a few threats and a few words, a few _he’s a killer! don’t let him go!_ and a few other slanders besides. It wouldn’t have been a real problem, except before the boots were half-way across the parking lot, a gun cracked and a bullet chipped his bike’s paint.  
  
He tore onto the road like the bastards behind them had any good aim. His new passenger clung like a limpet, knees tight on Andrew’s sides and hands fisted into his jacket. Three more bullets whizzed by harmlessly – then the bike flew past the truck and down the dusty road, and the gunmen were left choking on black fumes.

With a head start like that, they had no chance in hell of catching up.  
  
The guy at his back didn’t let go until Andrew craned his neck back to simper, “Haven’t you road bitch before? _Ease up,_ sweetheart,” and the black-haired guy in a ratty T-shirt and even rattier jeans, cheek smudged with mud and blood, blinked brown eyes at him before he finally leaned back. Not that Andrew’s monster was built for two: it had a dual seat from its original blueprints, but he’d never had reason to add a backrest or sidebar. Maybe Kevin hopped on once or twice after he ran yet another bike into the ground, but otherwise, it went empty.  
  
This idiot wasn’t going to change that. He wasn’t even close to dressed for riding: Andrew swore he could already smell those worn-out sneakers melting.  
  
Gunmen after a guy who hadn’t left his run-away teenaged years behind. That face didn’t look close to being capable of murder. Rather like all of the Free Foxes, he didn’t fit.  
  
(He wasn’t bad on the eyes, either.)  
  
Racing down the road at speeds too fast for the guy to have a prayer at jumping off and keeping all bones intact, Andrew demanded, “What kind of moron jumps on a stranger’s moving bike?”  
  
“I grew up in a shop,” the idiot yelled back. “I knew you wouldn’t tip. It’s obvious you know what you’re doing with this nasty piece of work.”  
  
“A shop?”  
  
“One by a boneyard.”  
  
“So you’re a mechanic.”  
  
“I’m not a killer,” he said, which was exactly what a killer would say.  
  
But that didn’t matter. Word had it their mobile mechanic Seth had finally bit the Raven-made bullet; it was the whole reason they were collecting at Santa Monica. 

If he was any good at riding, maybe Andrew had just picked up their replacement.


	11. neil josten is a decent mechanic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> continuation for the prompt: biker au.
> 
> ( **warning:** nsfw, nc-17. andrew/neil and their motorcycle. )

Rattle and clank all they want to furiously cool the room, the air conditioning did _nothing_ to dent the shop’s heat. Set deep in the bowels of South Carolina, the warehouse Neil worked in, lived in and all-around occupied had a love-hate relationship with the hot, swampy summers. This day was decidedly on  the hateful side.

It might have helped if he took off the leather jacket, but that simply wasn’t an option. 

Someone entered the shop and dropped, by the racket it caused, a half-full tool kit on his metal work bench. Given the lack of talk, Neil didn’t bother looking up from the engine he was elbows-deep in; he knew who it wasn’t, and more importantly, he had a good idea of who it was.

His suspicions were confirmed when the man said, “There’s absolutely nothing left in there you could possibly improve.”

[[MORE]]

“Never know,” he tossed back, rolling his shoulders to work out the ache when he finally sat straight. The jacket didn’t creak - it was ten years too old to be new - but it pulled: too short on the sleeves, too short at the hem, but loose enough to not be an overt issue. He tacked on as a truthful after-thought, “Besides. I like looking at her.”

“Sure you do,” Andrew drawled, “fuckin’ scrap rat.”

“That’s not even a real term.” He closed the lid, fastened its easier clasps, but still didn’t look back. Andrew, gentleman that he wasn’t, came to him. He had the bike in an iron rear lift, secure as anything, but the extra inches had the unintended effect of making Andrew have to work a little harder at climbing up behind him– not too hard, of course, the guy could pull himself up a fence one-handed if he wanted, but it made Neil smile. By the fingers digging into his hipbones, he knew Andrew caught it. 

That was fine. That was plenty fine.

“You like scrap,” Andrew said, oh-so-patient, “and you still dress like a rat. Thus, scrap rat.”

“The jacket’s yours,”  Neil pointed out, oh-so-helpful, “and so’s the bike.”

“And yet, you’re wearing one and sitting on the other.”

“Yeah? You gonna do something about it?”

The challenge was there. Andrew mulled it over for all the time it took for him to slip his fingertips into Neil’s front jean pockets, and then hit it running. 

“Too easy,” he breathed against the shell of Neil’s ear, which wasn’t fair, it really, really wasn’t fair, all Neil did was arch his back and brace his hands on the bars. If his legs were spread far, that was the bike’s fault for being so godawfully wide. “I might start thinking this was a set up.”

When thumbs began to rub circles at the jut of his hips between jeans and t-shirt, Neil finally turned his head to look over his shoulder. He flashed Andrew a grin, all teeth; it wasn’t a threat, not one bit, but he liked to make the impression, and he thought Andrew might, too. “If it was, you walked right into it, sweetheart.”

Andrew snorted, his edges softened, eyes and mouth loose at the edges, as fond as he ever got. “Wipe that stupid look off your face, you goddamn amateur.” Then he leaned forward and kissed him, and that was good, that was real good, the hands in his pockets pulling on the inseam and seat and air warming even further between and around them. It suffocated, the smell of gasoline and oil, of old, burned rubber and soldered metal, but the shop’s smell was nothing compared to what they had going on in their shared seat on the mechanized monster.

“What’ll it be?” Was murmured against his lips, teeth snagging the bottom to tug, gentle as Andrew always somehow managed to be.

“Yeah,” Neil breathed, or shuddered, or both, “yes, fuck, yes.”

Andrew ground the heel of his palm against the top of Neil’s pants, fingers cupped below, pressure tight. A gasp definitely shuddered out of him at that, his back arched a further to angle back; Andrew shifted forward, closed his legs against Neil’s, the distinct outline settling exactly where Neil would want it if they didn’t have any layers between them. 

Retract that: Andrew broke apart their kiss to drop his forehead against Neil’s shoulder and moved his hips in a nice little undulation, and okay, the layers could stay if this didn’t break up.

Below them, the bike creaked; she was a big girl, she could take a their standing weight just fine, but no matter how often they did this, that little reminder pooled something extra pleasant in Neil’s gut. He resisted, very narrowly, the urge to flip on the engine and let her purr. Maybe another time, maybe in a bit, but Andrew had one hand undoing his fly and another edging under his shirt, and he’d rather not end things on the spot.   
“You really were waiting up for this,” Andrew ground out as he nosed into the damp hairs at the back of Neil’s neck. Teeth grazed and then set into the soft skin behind his ear – Near didn’t even try to stop his low, happy moan.

The words hit and he let go of the bars to curve his back against Andrew’s front with a small, dry-mouthed laugh, reaching over his head to tangle fingers into Andrew’s hair and rolling his hips to match Andrew’s. A hiss was his reward, tongue worrying at the spot under his ear; then Andrew freed his cock to roughly thumb the slit and it was Neil’s turn to curse, head lolling back. 

Andrew’s legs crushed his against unyielding metal, the pipeline digging into his ankles. Neil somehow found his footing on the pads and pushed himself up an inch – Andrew, neat as any well-oiled engine, slid under him, the arm around his chest tightening as Neil sat back on his lap, feet hooking on the back of Andrew’s calves.

“Could–” Neil managed, and felt quite impressed with himself that he managed to say, “- lube in the drawer, we could –”

Andrew twisted his wrist at the end of a long stroke,  pulled Neil down to meet his rythm, hot mouth around his earlobe, and murmured, “Not today.”

“Okay,” Neil gasped, because that was really, really, _really,_ just fine.

Andrew worked him over like a dream, and he lost himself to it: heat, heat, heat, inside and out, burning him up like he’d swallowed the sun. He did his level best to keep himself moving but Andrew had his nails scraping along his chest and over sensitive nipples, his hand tight and pulls strong on his cock, and it was a damn good thing nothing lived within fifteen miles of the shop, a keen ripped from his lungs and his fingers curled desperately in Andrew’s hair for something to hold onto as white hot bliss racked through him. 

When he could think outside his own body again, he found himself practically bent over the bike’s seat and engine box; Andrew had his hands curled around his hips, his pupils blown wide and the smallest beat of breath staccatoing from his parted mouth. 

The leather seat felt too rough, too hot and unbending, but the look on Andrew’s face had Neil once more arching his back and raising his hips, giving Andrew an angle to work with and, finally, what _had_ to be a dopey smile. Neil really, really didn’t care.

In a thin voice, Andrew cursed him, his eyes slipped shut and body curved forward as he shuddered through his own rush of euphoria. 

After, they both had to catch their breath. After, as Neil’s feet grew numb and his back protested the afternoon of being bent forward, Andrew shifted and sighed, “It’s going to be a mess.”

“She’s had worse,” Neil hummed back, and almost didn’t bite back a bubbling laugh.

Andrew huffed into his hair. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be up for his typical self-aftercare of distance and clean up, but for right then, Neil forgot any tinkering he had to do and enjoyed the solid weight along his front and back.


	12. jeremy knox has performance anxiety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: Jeremy/Jean/Kevin.
> 
> this is **nsfw** , basically a pwp, and set post-canon universe.

"How are you here?"

Kevin's fingers froze from the third button on his shirt. His eyes found Jeremy's and narrowed.

"I could leave."

It sounded annoyed. Kevin off the court, Jeremy had discovered, almost always sounded annoyed.

Jeremy realized his mistake only then, and immediately felt awful.

"No, wait, that's not what I meant," he protested. It sounded feeble. "I meant, uh..."

Behind him, Jean quietly guffawed.

On one hand, Kevin looked irritated and impatient. On the other, he looked a little how Jeremy felt: terribly uncertain. Both of them lacked their socks; only Jeremy lacked his shirt. Kevin had been working on joining him in half-undressed-ness before Jeremy's nervous blurting stilled his hand.

Jeremy watched Kevin. Kevin watched Jeremy.

Pressed as he was (minus socks, still shirted) against Jeremy's back, he clearly felt Jean's inhale-exhale- _sigh_. He had his hands on Jeremy's thighs, legs against legs and chin over his shoulder. That part was fairly normal. The rest of the night, not so much. He'd been subtle about it, but he'd kept Jeremy as a makeshift barrier between him and Kevin ever since they'd stumbled into the hotel room. They were all here for a media conference; it'd made sense over the phone to arrange a room together, but now, four hours of paparazzi, two sangrias and one long-island into the night, it seemed like they should've known better than to think the day would go without a hitch.

Was this a hitch? It felt like a hitch. Kevin's irritation had upgraded into outright frustration, his ears a deep, embarrassed red. Jeremy was ready to volunteer to sleep in the tub.

"Kevin," Jean ordered, the sound so abrupt Jeremy almost jumped, "take off the shirt and come here."

Hearing Jean smoothed his frustration back into irritation, and Kevin did as ordered. That he folded his shirt before leaving it on the chair didn't escape Jeremy's notice, but that was something Jean had done for an age and a half, too. Apparently it was a Raven thing. Huh. He didn't care for most Raven-related habits, but that one was a little endearing.

Then Kevin fulfilled the second part of the demand, and suddenly, Jeremy found his lap full of one of Exy's best strikers.

Jean grumbled a protest at his hands nearly being crushed, but Jeremy couldn't reply: Kevin was a good, albeit demanding and aggressive, kisser, all heat and tongue and teeth, and he was pretty sure he'd lost all possible words in between one and the next.

When Jean growled something against his neck in French and Kevin finally took a breath, Jeremy found that he still had two left. An eloquent, breathy, " _Holy fuck_."

As Jeremy watched, the red in Kevin's ears flooded his cheeks. His hands ran up and down his clothed legs. He shifted restlessly, weight settled back near Jeremy's knees. Rapidly expanding lungs whistled air through his nose, swollen lips shut tight. The look on his face was one Jeremy knew well.

Nervous. Kevin Day was nervous.

About who?

Jeremy snuck a quick glance to Jean. Jean looked back, but only after Jeremy caught him eyeing Kevin's chest like it was a gift from above. His look to Jeremy said, _What?_ and also, _If you really want to stop, we'll stop._

Past the scowling and cutting critique on the court (and they were long past that), Jean Moreau was not someone to get nervous around.

Which meant Kevin Day, shirtless and flushed, was nervous about Jeremy.

Oh.

Uh.

_Why?_

Sometime in the kissing, his hands had settled on Kevin's hips. Sometime during Jeremy's startled relevation, they'd frozen.

Kevin watched Jeremy watch Jean for a handful of seconds. He said, "I'm going to g--"

"Wait!" Jeremy blurted, hands locking down.

With this new information that Kevin Day was capable of being nervous, Kevin looked like a deer in the headlights.

"Um," he said, and scrabbled to find his trusty ability to babble under high pressure, "no, wait, that was. That was good. We could do that again?"

Jean, again, snorted. It was rude and brattish. Jean used to never be brattish. Jeremy loved when he was brattish.

Kevin stared and then,  _quietly_ , said, "Alright."

The next kiss was much less aggressive and demanding, more wondering and awed, more warm and tentative, but no less good. Jeremy would have to send Thea a thank-you card. Would that be weird? Kevin said they were in an open relationship. A thank-you card would probably be weird.

The kiss deepened, Kevin shifting forward.  Jeremy's hands found something to do: run up tight muscle, find the impressions over shoulder blades and under obliques and over the spine, each nook and cranny mapped out one at a time.

He broke off from Kevin only because Jean's fingers had climbed to his chest and thumbed roughly over one, then two, nipples. Kevin watched with heavy eyes, though soon enough he was back to claim Jeremy's mouth, teeth grazing his bottom lip and lips moving very enticingly. He felt a drier mouth press against his the soft spot under his ear, Jean's tongue flicking out in time with his fingers. Jeremy shivered. Jeremy forgot, for a moment, who was on his lap.

Eventually Jean's hands left his chest to find his hands on Kevin's back; fingers interlaced, Jean guided him down to cup Kevin's ass, and Jeremy found himself swallowing Kevin's cut-off moan.

Encouraged, Kevin's hips slotted forward and knocked the breath out of Jeremy's lungs. Denim was really, really too rough, and the thin cotton did nothing to dim the zipper's threat to bite. Also, Jeremy's feet felt like they were falling asleep from lack of circulation. Also, he was shifting too much. Also, there was no way Kevin was having as good of a time as he was with the kissing business. Also, _holy fuck,_ his hands were on Kevin's ass. Kevin had been nervous about this. What was he expecting? Something mind-blowing? Jeremy didn't do mind-blowing. He sometimes told himself that he did mind-blowing because Jean kept coming back, but Jean was susceptible to anything Jeremy suggested and not to be trusted as an unbiased gauge of Jeremy's skills in bed.

"Pants," Kevin growled against his mouth.

Jean responded in French. Kevin also responded in French. Jeremy kept his meltdown in English.

"Ah," he finally said, and a few wordless noises besides because despite his demand for de-pantsing, Kevin would not give up Jeremy's mouth, but eventually Jeremy managed to move his own down to Kevin's throat and Kevin allowed it and so he could say, "can't move, Jean, I need you to--"

Jean shifted back as much as he could, which allowed cool air to tell Jeremy just how much he'd been sweating from kissing and ass-grabbing alone, and gave him something else to worry about ( _oh, god, what if I stink, would they tell me_ ). Kevin levered himself up which briefly made Jeremy anxious that he did in fact stink but, oh, no, he was just undoing his belt and zipper and _uuuhhhhhhhhh_.

Kevin, while looking irritated about it, had to get off the bed to actually take off his pants.

Jean said, "I'm impressed you aren't so impatient to just shove them down as far as they needed to be."

His voice was deep and deeply accented, the exact tone Jeremy had been trained to equate with _score! you're gonna get laid tonight!_ It hadn't yet failed to lift his mood, and it didn't fail this night, even with Kevin Day abruptly naked in front of him.

Actually, he was pretty sure Kevin Day being naked in front of him helped.

Maybe a bit.

Jeremy couldn't quit staring.

Kevin kept meeting his eyes and then looking away. He asked in French, but this time with a word Jeremy knew too, "Lube?"

Jean answered for him. Kevin disappeared to the bathroom.

A hand tipped his chin back and back and back until he fell back into Jean's lap. He blinked owlishly up at the amused, affectionate, patented-Jean-Moreau-irritated-but-not-really face aimed down at him.

"Are you alright?" Jean asked.

"I," Jeremy started. Words failed, so he abandoned them to gesture helplessly at the beige, horribly boring ceiling.

The pinch between Jean's eyebrows that Jeremy hadn't been able to place an emotion to disappeared. He patted Jeremy's cheek as if to say, _there, there. You're a champ. You'll be fine._

The hard line next to Jeremy's ear was something he knew what to do with. Even if Jean was biased toward Jeremy, it'd been close to six years since he'd transferred to the Trojans.

And yet Jean had the gall to look somewhat surprised when Jeremy rolled over to work at his zipper (why was Jean still dressed? that was the real crime of the night), fingers clumsy but adequate at reaching their goal.

That was him. Mister Adequate.

The noise Jean made when he dragged fabric down and curled a tight fist around his thick shaft begged to differ, but again. Jean was biased.

One hand Jeremy wasted in pushing Jean's knee flat to the bed. One hand tugged gently at the loose skin under his balls while he licked up one large vein and at the edge of his crown. Soon enough Jean's hand had buried itself in Jeremy's hair (he rarely tugged; when he did, that was when Jeremy knew he had really done a fantastic job) and his breathing picked up, the air hitching on every other inhale.

When he took a breath and swallowed Jean down, he cursed his name. Behind them, someone said something like, "Oh, wow."

Jeremy choked.

Jean actually cursed his name, then. He pushed Jeremy back by the shoulder, his face white as a sheet in fear for both his sensitive anatomy and Jeremy's throat.

Jeremy continued catching his breath while Jean snarled at Kevin in French and, stubborn and grouchy and vaguely apologetic, Kevin snarled back.

"M'fine," Jeremy reassured them once he had his breath back. It didn't take too long. It felt like it took forever, mostly because both Jean and Kevin were watching him with what he thought (and hoped) was worry. "Fine. I'm fine. Really."

"If you're sure," Kevin edged, back to nervous himself.

Jeremy looked back at him, caught sight of the bottle in his hand and his swollen, very generous cock, and remembered why it wasn't just Jean and him.

Swallowing with a dry and slightly aching throat, Jeremy croaked, "Positive."

Taking it at face value, Kevin climbed back onto the bed. He offered the bottle with worry peeking out the edges of a controlled expression, his eyes once more flitting between Jean and Jeremy. "I'm not sure what to do with this."

"Really?" Jean asked. It was particularly brattish. He had, Jeremy supposed, just had teeth scrape very close his cock.

Kevin glared at him. Shrugged a shoulder. "Thea usually deals with it."

That put more than a few images in Jeremy's head, though he wasn't sure he needed them when he had the real deal sitting right next to him.

It also made his fool mouth blurt, "Wait. Are we your first guys?"

"No," Kevin said, voice tight.

"No," Jean said at the same time, voice even tighter.

Jeremy held up his palms in acceptance, and reconsidered his word choice.

"Am I your first... pitcher?" He asked.

Both stared at him.

Right. Baseball was not Exy. Ravens didn't have time for not-Exy.  He oftentimes wanted to strangle the Moriyamas, but this was not the place for that line of thinking.

"Is this your first time playing goalie?" He amended with a aimlessly waved hand.

"Oh," Kevin said, realization dawning immediately. That was stupid. The Ravens were stupid. "Aside from Thea? Yes."

Sure. Of course. Right.

Kevin would just, you know, compare every guy to follow against Jeremy's performance. That was fine. That was totally fine. No pressure.

"Is he alright?" Kevin asked Jean.

"Help me with his pants," Jean answered, finally accepting the bottle. "He'll snap out of it."

Unfortunately Jean was right, because once his pants were pulled to his ankles and he kicked them off,  levered up on his elbows and the world slowing down, his body remembered what it wanted out of this encounter and his eyes wouldn't quit catching on every inch of open skin Kevin flaunted. There was a lot of it. It all looked great. Jean always looked great, and Jeremy would never tire of looking at Jean, but Kevin Day was-- wow. A star, alright.

"Come here," Jean bade Kevin, his fingers slicked with thick gel. Kevin hesitated a second, but did, straddling the mostly clothed man easily. Jean said in French, "Arms on shoulders, lift up," and Kevin did.

Jeremy was in the perfect position to fully appreciate the smooth slide of the first finger, the shudder that climbed up Kevin's spine on the second, the hitch and hiss of his breath as Jean curled his free hand around Kevin's cock, the slow work in opening Kevin open, the slow twitch and eventual roll of Kevin's hips on a third finger, all three slipping to the knuckle. Jean's face was turned up to Kevin's, and it took some shifting but eventually Jeremy caught the intent look,  eyes dark and hungry, tongue darting out to wet parted lips, his whole face flushed.

He couldn't see Kevin's expression, but from Jean's, he could imagine.

Jean drew it out too long for Kevin. Jeremy, now, he could watch for five hours (-- maybe not five hours but the principle of five hours, yes, totally --), but Kevin shifted his weight and lost the tension in his shoulders that had appeared on the first finger and, when Jean hooked his hand and rubbed with his thumb at the thin skin next to where his fingers disappeared, Kevin's whole body flinched and he sank down toward Jean's lap. Jeremy very much wanted to see Jean's cock disappear in him like his fingers had. Kevin didn't seem to mind the idea, either.

"Jean," he hissed, all aggression and demand, all hovering at the edge of begging.

Jean licked his lips again, held his hand still, and murmured, "Jeremy?"

"Right," Jeremy said, more reflex than comprehension. Then, with more feeling, " _Right,_ " and he scrambled to get the lube for himself. Kevin's thighs continued to twitch and spasm at holding still; around Jean's shoulders, his arms trembled.

When Jean withdrew his hand, Kevin groaned with loss -- when Jeremy, anxiety mixed up with anticipation, lined up and took its place, Kevin's moan moved through him with need.

 _Holy fuck_ Jeremy thought for the third time, and maybe said. Kevin opened around him easy as anything, all-consuming heat and subtly flexing muscle and slick acceptance. He pushed back into Jeremy without care; his arms dropped from Jean's shoulders for his hands to shakily wrap around his forearms, his head buried against the junction of shoulder and neck. His back arched beautifully, sweat-damp and shining in the hotel's cheap lighting.

( _He didn't smell,_ Jeremy's brain unhelpfully grumbled at him.)

(At that moment, balls-deep in Kevin goddamn Day, Jeremy didn't care.)

Experimentally, he rolled his hips forward. Less experimentally, Kevin rolled with him and then pushed back harder, his gasps muffled against Jean's neck.

Jean gave him a constant feed of French-sounding noise, his lips turned against Kevin's dark hair, his hands petting along Kevin's back. His eyes, lidded and softened with arousal, caught Jeremy's over Kevin -- his words grew breathier, Kevin's hips stuttering and stumbling for a faster pace in the midst, and Jeremy had the distinct impression he was being documented in a language he wasn't fluent enough with to follow.

Well. Whatever. If they were so set on watching, he'd give them a show.

(Yeah! He had five years of experience under his belt! He could do this!)

One hand curling around Kevin's hip to keep him from demanding too much too fast, he curled himself over Kevin's back, knees widening to help balance out the shift in weight, and reached for Kevin's dick.

Kevin almost sobbed. Jean's eyes, now much closer, widened.

One stroke, two, three, five-- and then Kevin shuddered and clenched around Jeremy, pushing back hard and every muscle seizing. It once more stole Jeremy's breath, another breathless curse wrung from his throat. Jean echoed him, his eyelashes fluttering twice as he pressed his cheek closer to Kevin's hair.

It took a moment more for Jeremy to follow Kevin over the edge, but not much longer, the bed springs creaking and headboard unpleasantly loud against the wall. While he did, Kevin found the strength to draw himself back and catch Jean's mouth; it seemed much less graceful than his earlier kisses, but Jeremy had to press his forehead against Kevin's back and ride out too-hot white pleasure and, in sad consequence, miss most of it.

He discovered the reason Jean had been so flushed was because Kevin's hand had dropped to his cock, and apparently, he was as good with hand jobs as he was with kissing. Jean was quiet on the best of nights: at first it had spiked Jeremy's worry that he wasn't doing something right, but then he learned to equate speechlessness with everything done right. This night, the first breath Jean took after his orgasm was light, fluttery and bone-deep pleased, and he took no time at all to find it after Jeremy had found his.

Carefully, more than a little shaky, Jeremy pulled out of Kevin. Kevin neatly folded into Jean, like a house of cards with one side pulled.

The bed was a mess. They were a mess. Jean would not be able to wear that shirt or pants before a thorough washing.

Jeremy, after he'd surveyed the damage with a deep sense of accomplishment, told them he was not going to sleep with everyone like this and went to fetch some towels.

He caught how Jean and Kevin both tracked him with heavily lidded eyes, the looks on their faces close to reverence, but -- by then, it was a bit too late to be worried about that.


	13. andrew minyard is a terrible bed fellow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: andrew has a fear of thunderstorms.
> 
> warning for absolute fluff. I went a little overboard.

The promised storm rolled in during the early morning, which was to say, Neil Josten woke up at three-fifty-four to a foot lodging in the small of his back and kicking him off the bed.

For two years of sharing a bed every time they managed to sneak away to Columbia, that was a first. He’d woken to a fight, Andrew seeing someone else and Neil not actually being someone else, but that usually involved more hands around the throat and knees shoved into his gut and Andrew staring down at him until they both came down from the adrenaline rush. They were rare, but they happened. There was no fighting a nightmare, waking or asleep.

But when Neil tumbled onto the cold floor, his pillow following him like a loyal companion, and even after regaining his senses and calming his heart, no one appeared at the edge to check on the damage (something Andrew always did but never acknowledged the intent behind), something struck him as Off.

Outside the window, lightning cracked across the sky. The downpour had been bad when they’d fallen asleep, but the light show was new.

Neil rubbed at his newly sore back, but it wasn’t that bad. The lack of movement from Andrew concerned him more.

“Andrew?” He murmured, quiet as he levered himself up and peered over the bed’s edge. Maybe Andrew had finally managed to sleep through one of his nightmares. Or he was becoming a bed hog that lashed out just to lash out. That was– not good, actually, that spelled a lot of trouble.

But Andrew wasn’t blissfully unaware of his actions or tossing around in a nightmare. He was a blanket-covered lump, the comforter pulled tight over his head and his shape eerily still under another flash of light.

Neil cautiously pulled himself back onto the bed. He had no blanket to crawl under; Andrew had effectively wrapped himself up in.

The pillow, though. Neil could nab that off the floor. So. That was something.

As he did, thunder at last chased lightning in a wall-shaking rumble and crack. Eyes better adjusted to the dark, Neil couldn’t miss the blanket bundle’s full-bodied flinch.

Neil blinked.

Oh.

It was the storm that had frightened Andrew into wakefulness. And, probably, lashing out.

Although his first reflex wanted him to talk Andrew out of his silence like he did for Andrew’s nightmares, but a storm wasn’t something you could wake up from. Coffee with ice cream and a cigarette wasn’t going to make the thunder and lightning go away.

(Anyway, he hated being crowded or coddled when he was scared. They both did, to different degrees.)

This was also, the not so small part of Neil that cherished every bit of Andrew, terrifying wake-up calls or not, a strangely endearing characteristic. It was very– different. A storm hadn’t betrayed Andrew’s trust or murdered his hope; it simply was. And that, apparently, frightened him.

The rest of Neil very much did not enjoy a frightened Andrew.

That part had him - with no reluctance - abandon his pillow to close the blinds and, shuffling in the close to pitch black through a familiar room, turn on the bedroom lights. He had to blink away spots, but the curled lump under the covers  shifted for a reason other than fear.

“Turn off the fucking lights,” the blankets snarled at him. He didn’t sound scared. How he sounded meant jack shit.

“The storm woke me up,” Neil replied, easy-as-you-please. Again: how he sounded meant jack shit. “I was thinking of making breakfast.”

Thunder interrupted him. The curled lump curled tighter.

After a handful of seconds wherein Neil was sure Andrew checked and re-checked that his voice wouldn’t shake, he was told: “Like hell you were. The storm didn’t wake you up.”

“Your foot in my back did,” Neil admitted, tone unchanged, “which means you owe me.”

“Since when?”

“Since I might have a bruised tailbone.”

“You’re not bitching at me to lay off as much as you could be. You’re obviously fine.”

He was scared bad.

Huh.

(It was still endearing.)

But as Neil made the verbal equivalent of _whatever_ without using the actual word, the blanket shifted down enough for blond tufts to poke out. He decided to give Andrew the space to decide what he’d do by himself, heading into the kitchen and pulling out the noisiest arrangements of pots and pans as he could, all the lights from bedroom to kitchen flipped on.

By the time he had the buttery spread for cinnamon toast whipped up, a tense  Andrew Minyard slinked into the kitchen in the same manner a pissed off alley cat would crawl its way out of a kicked garbage can. Neil pretended to ignore him, though once he stopped by the table he asked for help on lathering the toast.

Andrew did as asked, elbows kept in and shoulders rigid. The storm outside wouldn’t abate. It wasn’t supposed to, said the late-night weatherman when Neil took a moment to turn on the television, for another two hours. Severe thunderstorm warnings covered Columbia in red on the green and yellow meteorological map.

After the toast started cooking, filling the kitchen with a sugary smell in direct challenge to the thunder crashing outside, he wouldn’t leave Neil alone. Arms looped around his waist, hands clasped loosely in front of his stomach, Andrew’s front plastered to Neil’s back and his face shoved into Neil’s shoulders. He didn’t much want to move when Neil had to take off the toast. He didn’t even want toast. He didn’t care Neil had to put away the butter. He became, in short, an absolute nuisance.

Every time thunder cracked or lightning flashed or the wind rattled the panes in a strong gust, his grip around Neil tightened, his knuckles whitening and forehead pressing harder into Neil’s shoulder.

Neil couldn’t find it in him to mind his human-shaped barnacle too much. He chattered about their up-coming Exy games and the newest Fox recruits, their chances at the championships (good) and what he’d heard from Matt about the upperclassman (also good).

When early breakfast was ready, Andrew pulled him onto his lap at the dining table, chin hooking over his shoulder and expression shuttered but calmer. Neil let him take care of cutting syrup-drenched toast and feeding both of them one forkful at a time, which was more than enough to make up for the rude awakening and early hour.

Neil nearly dozed off right there, half-curled on Andrew’s lap, head tipped onto his shoulder, the news’ drone overtaking the rain and wind. Minute by ticked-off minute, the thunder grew distant. Lighting continued to flash through the house, but by and by, it lessened, too.

Even before the storm fully passed, Andrew relaxed to nothing but the occasional thunder-inspired grimace.

When he tilted his head against Neil’s, his breathing and heart rate steady, Neil gave up fighting for consciousness and drifted back to sleep.


	14. neil josten cannot hold his alcohol.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: neil gets a lil too drunk.

_I swear_ , over the phone at close to the middle of the night, Nicky’s voice was exasperated and fond, _he had one irish coffee and maybe two shots. Nothing else._

In the background, Andrew heard Boyd’s voice: _he said he’d been building up his tolerance!_

Which really translated to: he went from never to occasionally drinking. Neil, as always, could be trusted for an awful judge of his own limits.

They would drive home with him in a taxi or uber, but they’d been hoping to hit up a few more Californian bars before the morning came and they had to fly back to Palmetto State. Thus, the bright idea of calling the one who’d stayed behind at the hotel to collect the one that needed to go home. And thus, Andrew waited at the curb as Neil’s taxi arrived, biding time with a cigarette and mapping where stars would be if the sky wasn’t dimmed by man-made light.

He paid the driver as Neil, determined to walk on his own, half-stumbled and half-jumped out the back. By the time Andrew straightened to follow, Neil had made it to the hotel doors.

Even drunk, Neil was one quick bastard.

His feet betrayed him soon after the doors, however; Andrew had to discard his cigarette in the ash bin outside the lobby, but he managed to be there in time to catch Neil on the stagger that threatened to overturn him, arm slipping around his back and hand curled at his side. 

“Andrew,” Neil greeted him, amiable and flushed, his cheeks and ears brushed pink.

“Is there a reason you’re running?” Andrew asked him, supporting ever more weight as Neil’s legs apparently decided they’d rather not stand straight.

“Bathroom,” Neil said, quite morose.

Right.

They continued on to their room. 

With their success the year before, funding for the Exy team had sky-rocketed. Which was good, as they now needed to fly to places like Sacramento, California, and win or lose (though this game had been a win), there was a general wish to enjoy the city as much as the court. The hotel wasn’t the best, but it had the necessities: for instance, a bed, a television, and a bathroom equipped with a toilet. 

Andrew waited outside the room, but as he didn’t hear any puking, he figured Neil would be alright on his own.

The sink turned on and off in just about the same breath. The door opened. Andrew gave him a pointed look, Neil frowned back, and washed his hands properly. Then he wobbled his way to where Andrew perched on the edge of a one-of-a-million bed and told him, “You smell like smoke.”

“Fancy that,” Andrew replied. “A smoker, smelling like smoke.”

“I like it.” 

“I never would have guessed.”

Neil shushed him. Actually shushed him. 

He also tipped forward into Andrew’s legs, folded into the bed, rammed his shoulder into Andrew’s in what was probably supposed to be a bump, and lolled his head onto his shoulder. Obligingly, Andrew again wrapped his arm around his back and gave him some support. In gratitude, Neil licked a stripe up his neck.

He yelped when Andrew grimaced, pulled his arm back, and let him fall to the bed. With his shirt rumpled to his bellybutton and eyes foggy, he asked, “Wha’?”

“That was gross,” Andrew informed him. 

“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Neil mused to the ceiling.

Much of Neil’s life could be applied to that statement, Andrew thought, if one replaced ‘good’ with ‘the only.’

A moment later - a moment of looking Neil over, from the dopey, peaceful look on his face that bordered sleep now that he was horizontal to the fingers laced over his chest to the trail of hair disappearing into his skewed jeans. When he brought his eyes back up, Neil’s met them, the flush along his cheeks darkening. He looked like someone who had been hoping for a night with his date in an empty hotel room. He looked like a cat with yellow feathers stuck in his teeth.

“How drunk are you?” Andrew asked, abruptly suspicious. 

“Mm,” Neil hummed. “Good question.”

A slight exhale. Another pause.

“Come here,” Andrew murmured.

Elbows raising him up inch by slow inch, Neil once more formed himself to Andrew’s side, head buried in the crook of his neck. He nibbled. Andrew’s hand tightened in his shirt. He hummed. Andrew shivered.

They ended up horizontal again before long. Before that, Andrew tied one of Nicky’s colorful socks on the outer doorknob and locked the deadbolt.


	15. neil josten and the five fingered man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: Neil Josten being good at using a knife.

Although he no longer kept them under his armbands, Andrew had never let go of Renee’s knives.

For that reason and that reason alone, David laid prone and bloody on the ground, not Neil.

That the man’s name was actually David was questionable, as he’d originally introduced himself as a plumber sent by the landlord and not, as he actually was, one of the Butcher’s old, embittered goons. Going by how he’d blamed Neil for his many troubles after he’d shouldered his way into the apartment and pulled a knife, life had not treated David well after Ichirou’s shift in management.

Neil had kept him talking and not stabbing until he’d been able to get to the drawer with Renee’s old blades. Then it had been–

An indignant yell, a dirty little bastard, nothing like your father, a slash.

A side-step, a blade’s shining edge, a cut.

Shining silver, shining red, another yell. Another cut. Another yell.

Blurred, blurring, one long blur.

A heavy thump.

A wet gurgle.

The clock told him it had been less than a minute. David had been a better fighter than thinker, for all that neither points worked toward keeping him alive.

He’d chosen his profession.

Neil had been born into it.

The trick, junior, is wanting to live more than the other guy.

It was the one piece of advice his father had given him that he hadn’t begrudged. His mother agreed with it. His everything agreed with it, the beat in his chest urging him toward survival at all costs.

(Some people claimed to be knife-wielding experts. Maybe they were, in a controlled gym on a swept platform with an armored and friendly opponent. The others - the brawlers, the skulking muggers, the twenty-seven-year-olds spending an off day watching a gaudy movie recommended by a cousin-by-choice - fought fast or died young.)

(No matter one’s skill, a knife would cut whatever it was turned to. Every fight could be the last.)

(His father hadn’t told him that. It was too obvious to bother with words.)

“Neil? It’s me.”

The clock told him it had been an hour.

Fifty-nine minutes blinked from existence. A body, full of holes, in a black bag, sealed without holes to keep the liquid in.

The living room stank from a man’s dying minutes (that Neil did not in any way remember). Blood stained the carpet, thickened and dried into a pool of red-brown.

Andrew, straight-faced and still, far out of Neil’s reach, repeated: “It’s me. It’s just me. There’s no need for the knives.”

Somewhere in the time that never had been, probably when the door had again opened, he’d fetched Renee’s knives. They were clean. His hands were clean. Fifty-nine minutes before, gore had streaked them; it seemed impossible for his hands to be so clean.

The red crusted under his nails was a trick of the mind. He wouldn’t have been so sloppy with evidence.

Realization struck: the knives, clean though they were, pointed toward Andrew.

Neil dropped the knives.

They fell to the bad, landing with nary more than a whisper of plastic.

Beside the bag was bleach and vinegar. Looking at the bright white bottle, he thought he might have been working to clean the carpet.

“Neil?”

As words refused to form, he nodded.

“Would I recognize whoever’s in the bag?”

There, he found a word. Croaked, voice roughened from chemicals and no water: “No.”

A small nod on Andrew’s part. He wouldn’t look away from Neil.

Neil didn’t want to look away from him.

They needed to call the police. He could see that in Andrew’s face, just as he could see how he’d argue.

Before that, however: a question in his voice, “You’re not bleeding.”

Neil shook his head.

“He wasn’t that good.”


	16. neil josten gets it on

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (and by it, I mean: Andrew Minyard.)
> 
>  **nsfw.** andreil. light bdsm, oblique references to past abuse.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“…”

“Yes. Neil. I’m sure.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Stop thinking so loudly, then.”

It used to be that they had good hours.

Atop a roof, trading smoke and kisses, a snatched evening of paradise.

It used to be that they had good days.

A game gone right, a day of practice that brought home how far the Foxes had come, news of the Ravens being disqualified for a season for health concerns. The weekend of Dan and Matt’s wedding.

It came to be that that they had a good week.

A full week wherein their off days matched. The planets aligned, and Andrew had himself transferred onto Neil’s team. A quiet week at the cottage Reynolds picked with their makeshift extended family. The impromptu cat adoption and subsequent naming as granted by Nicky been a good week.

They never labeled it as such, but objectively, by the time their heads hit their pillows, it was true: the hour, the day, the week, all of it had been good.

Objectively, by the time they flipped the calendar to the next page, the June of Neil’s thirty-third year was, in truth: a good month.

More relevantly, it was shaping up to be a good night.

They were dry-eyed and deathly sober. They were in their plush bed, the hour so late it might as well have tipped into the morning. They were softened by circumstance and the night stand’s yellow light.

The whole world, gentled.

The whole world, narrowed.

A kiss stole a breath. Between the two of them, that made for quite a bit of stolen air.

By habit, Neil flattened himself to the mattress, hands curling under his pillow, the whole of him surrendered. (It wasn’t too much to ask - it was precisely what he wanted.)

By instinct, he blinked against the light touch wandering down his cheek, head tilted back, blue-ringed eyes gazing up, up, up through dark lashes.

Above him: impassivity stretched thin over desire, like ice over a fire. Every touch inspired a spark; every shift dripped a shiver through the heat. Wonder had never been wanting for any aspect of their relationship, but something about Andrew’s weight on his hips, clothing shed and preparation done, glimmered bright and warm.

Leaning forward, body lifted off, another stolen breath.

The warning, the final chance to back off. Fingers played at Neil’s neck, warm palm spanning across his jugular, fingers brushing to the hollows under his ears. Both keenly felt the bob of an Adam’s apple, the reflexive swallow. Light, light, everything, light.

No fumbling, no slipping: a shift backward, a smooth slide down, ice cracked and melted and gone, heat surging in its wake. Andrew swallowed Neil’s gasp with only the slightest wince, pressure unrelenting until he was seated to the hilt.

A moment to adjust. Not a moment to wonder or marvel. That would require thought.

“Don’t move,” Neil hissed.

“Shut up,” Andrew breathed.

“Make me,” he laughed, head tilted back, mouth narrowly missing Andrew’s bowed forehead.

Fingers tightened on a thudding pulse; Neil tensed, cusp of surrender. Andrew leaned back, an infinitesimal measure that weighed heavy with precise control, weight shifted directly to Neil’s center of gravity. More importantly, it moved him to where Neil was five-odd inches in him.

To shut him up, Andrew only had to move. The choking was just a bonus.

In a small cant forward and circle back, in the smallest rock of his hips, in the abrupt clench of Neil’s jaw and rough intake of air obstructed, Andrew utilized both.

More, more, a voice urged into the dim light.

For a moment, Andrew let go.

Another gasp, clearer; a bitten-off cough, a low curse of, fuck you, Andrew. Let me fuck you.

“I thought you’d stop at fuck you.”

Groaning and coughing, Neil’s fists worked to pull his pillow apart. “That, too. Always. Fuck you, Andrew.”

A quiet tsk, and whatever tension might have been left in the blond’s form dissipated.

Neil felt the shift because it was a hand returning to his neck and another set flat on his chest: one for balance and one for poise, hips up and snapped down. A nudge bared the whole of Neil’s throat, a moan dragged up and scraped out, a rhythm directed by the sound and feeling, arousal digging in its heels to spur them on.

When Neil rose to meet his descent, his own breath hitched. One eye closed, one cracked open, Neil’s mouth curved in an open, foolish smile, his lungs struggling to keep up with his heart, chest heaving: the sight drew a sound from his own wind pipe, small and tight.

Encouragements were made between gasps and moans, you’re good and fantastic, feels amazing and thank you, thank you, thank you.

A spark caught, a flash-fire exploding behind his eyes and in his gut and lower yet. His legs shifted, restless, knees hugged tight to Neil’s sides. Another thrust, another burst; another second, both hands on Neil’s shoulders, pace up and Andrew’s back bowed; another hiss and a litany of his name on Neil’s lips, pleasure ridden out sharp and bright.

Andrew took himself in hand as Neil’s thickened. A few strokes, muscles clenching, the pressure hot, and Andrew spilled across Neil’s stomach as Neil spilled inside him, a shudder running from Neil to Andrew and back again.

Before any comments could be made or any changes done, Andrew ducked for a kiss.

Light, sloppy and gentle, it stole Neil’s breath.


	17. the foxes are fly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: dragon rider au.

“Ooh, that’s not good.”

“What’s not good?”

“Dragon. It’s saddled. Ten o'clock.”

Aaron snatched the eye-glass from Nicky, squinting into the horizon. The Palmetto base laid in the midst of the mistiest mountain range in the kingdom, a location that was hell to get to without an agile serpentine dragon (of which Palmetto proudly and illegally stabled two) for a good reason. Though Wymack and Winfield made annual trips into the surrounding lands to recruit apprentices and aids, they weren’t a fan of uninvited outsiders. Isolation - a slice of peace, a chance to breathe, a land apart - was their key selling point.

A bulky, red, two legged wyvern and its rider was definitely, definitely uninvited.

“Should we close the gates?” Nicky asked. “And the sky-port?”

Aaron watched the creature climb over a jagged peak, its leathery wings working hard to keep it aloft. It didn’t move as fast as one would expect. If its rider meant them harm, they were being awfully bad about it.

“Not our call,” Aaron finally decided. “Let’s get Wymack.”

“He’s out,” Nicky reminded him, fretting,  "so, uh, Dan, maybe,“ already turning to race and find her. Close on his heels, Aaron followed.

They closed the gates but not the sky-port. Wymack and Winfield had taken one of the dragons to fetch their new batch of recruits, but Dan barked at Kevin to saddle the third and get ready for a possible fight.

Their principle rider and a former (depending on who you asked) knight, Kevin did as told but not before demanding, irate,  _Why are we even letting it in? We should batten down and let it leave or starve. It won’t last long here if it doesn’t know how to hunt on cliffs._

 _It looks old,_ Matt had offered. _Nobody would attack alone with an old dragon, right?_

Dan followed him up with, _We can hope so. We need to know how they found out about us, too._

And that was how the bulk of Palmetto’s defense force - which was a generous term; they were only the defense because they were the only ones in good enough health and with enough training to put up a fight - ended up crowded in the top of their hollowed out mountain in an open sky-port, watching as the red speck drew closer and closer.

Kevin had an excellent seat, but the dragon was in Palmetto for the same reason as the humans. She’d lost her hearing, eyes and front left leg in a battle and had been slated to be put down. Her brother, the one Wymack and Winfield took to surrounding villages, had broken them out and searched for refuge. Neither were bonded to any humans within Palmetto (and subsequently no one could communicate completely with them), but for a pair of dragons raised from the egg in captivity, it wasn’t necessary. Palmetto meant them no harm. That was apparently enough reason for them to continue living with them.

They gave them a much needed edge against the few raiders that tried to take their territory.  

Which, Nicky worried, this new dragon might be heralding the start of some new, impressive raiding clan. What if it was a scout? What if it was a messenger? What if it was bringing them Wymack or Winfield’s head in a sack?

What it turned out to be was as Matt said: old, and not looking for a fight.

It landed heavily with crooked and broken talons on the port’s runway, its wings folding in and doubling as arms as it stalked its way into the cave proper. Kevin’s dragon looked nimble next to lumbering weight, and in positively fantastic health next to its broken and mottled scales. Still, it was much bigger than any of the humans. They raised swords and notched arrows even as they stepped back against the sky-port’s stone walls, tension spiking in the nine-person group.

It swung its massive, horned head to take in each of them. On its back sat a youth, his ragged outfit and plain appearance incongruous with what beast he held the reigns to.

No wonder the creature had labored so hard to get over the mountains. Two hefty packs lined the saddle, bound tight with leather bands. Dark brown fur peeked out the lids: the inside must have been covered.

"Bit of a fancy ride for a fur trader,” Dan joked as she kept her sword tip toward the dragon and her eyes on its rider.

“Word in the land is you provide sanctuary,” the rider said, his back straight and no weapon but the dragon between him legs (and what better weapon was there?), “for those in need.”

“Depends on the need. What need has a dragon rider for refuge?”

The youth tilted his head at her, and then threw a pointed look at Kevin and his mount.

Kevin scowled back.

Everyone else privately admitted that was a bad qualifier to give.

“She’s my mother’s,” he finally said. “Not mine. Not really.”

“Where’s your mother?” Nicky asked.

His expression didn’t shift. “Not here.”

They understood what that meant. Usually a dragon wouldn’t care about human blood-lines enough to stick around a rider’s child, but – that wasn’t important right then.

“What’s in the packs?” Dan asked.

“Who are you running from?” Matt added.

“Will you let her and me stay until winter?”

 _Why winter?_ Dan wondered. But she said, “Not if you won’t tell us why you’re here, riding your mother’s dragon, with packs you obviously don’t want to share.”

“I don’t mind sharing what’s inside,” he replied, voice cool, “but if you try to take them, it’s not my fault if she eviscerates you.”

“Pleasant,” Nicky muttered. A few others looked like they agreed.

“All I need is a place to roost for spring to fall,” he continued, his eyes never once wavering from Dan’s. Apparently he’d guessed right on who their makeshift leader was. “I’ll pull my weight. I won’t eat more than she and I hunt. Frankly, it looks like you could use our help.”

He wasn’t wrong.

It still rubbed them wrong.

Dan eyed him, unhappy but intrigued despite herself. Finally she shook her sword in his direction and demanded, “Show us what’s in the bags.”

He stared a moment longer, but finally shrugged and words at the pack’s buckles. The dragon under him shifted her weight, her cracked lips drawn back to display teeth as wide as Matt’s forearm.

None of them flinched at the sight, but in the back, Seth cursed.

Then one pack was open, the teen tipping the bags forward to show those below, and a hush came over those gathered as they edged forward to see..

“Oh, my,” Renee finally breathed. “They’re beautiful.”

Nicky made a noise of agreement.

Matt was speechless.

“How many do you have?” Dan asked, voice tight.

“Six total,” he answered, “from the Moriyama’s finest. Taken just before their stables were flooded with their mothers inside.” Kevin’s dragon growled as he stiffened terribly, his eyes wide. The twins’ attention also narrowed. The new-comer looked Kevin’s way, but briefly, his focus returned to Dan to complete his plea. “No one followed me here. No one will know I’m here. I swear it. It’s as much for your benefit as mine. They want me dead. But that certainty won’t remain true if I don’t lay low until the winter.”

“Why winter?” Allison asked, her eyes sharp and untrusting.

“Because,” he said after a long pause, the lid of the pack closed and his hands deftly redoing the latches, “that’s how long the Moriyamas have given my father to retrieve them before they’ll execute him for his wife’s theft.”

 _Oh_ , breathed the collective.

Glances were exchanged. Kevin raised an immediate and vehement protest, realization on who the rider was and what unholy hell he could bring hitting him hard and fast. His dragon grew agitated by his clear agitation, her blinded head raised and nostrils flared to catch the scent of danger.

Nathaniel remained silent through it, his eyes trained on Dan’s.

The makeshift leader faltered as she listened to Kevin’s logical arguments but took in the weathered, aged dragon and its stubborn but hopelessly out-run rider. How far had he flown to get here? What had he heard to think they were worth it?

They were a last resort, she realized. This was the kid’s final shot.

“If you tell me what you intend to do with those eggs after and it sounds reasonable,” she said, raising her voice to speak over Kevin, “then. Maybe. We’ll grant you refuge.”

The rider nodded, a curt jerk of his chin.

He didn’t look any less tense, but for the first time since he’d arrived, he seemed able to breathe.

 _Well, fuck_ , she thought, knowing how the conversation would end and wondering how she was going to explain this one to the chief.  _Wymack always did like lost causes. Someone chased by the Butcher and Moriyamas both fits that profile pretty damn well._

* * *

 

Neil Josten, if that was his real name, occupied a single stall in otherwise silent and empty stables. Palmetto’s two dragons roosted there to sleep or relax, but policy kept the stable doors open at all hours. Really, given its shabby, hay-strewn, hardly swept quality and the large expanse of beautiful forests and hidden caves outside the castle, there was very little reason to stay beyond extreme duress and injury for a dragon.

Or a human.

Or a human and a dragon with a pack of expensive, illegal eggs.

It was safe to say: duress was high.

True to the interloper’s word, he took only water from the well and exchanged a share of the old dragon’s hunt for every extra ration.He didn’t interact with the others much beyond the necessitaties, which suited all parties involved just fine. Although Wymack had made a point of visiting him at least once a day to see what he was up to, it wasn’t like the chats were without motive: he wanted to keep Palmetto safe. As it stood, an egg-obsessed, ill-tempered dragon and its unfriendly, lone wolf ride posed a potential problem more than the future possibility of a bounty hunter raid, no matter what Neil Josten believed.

But time passed and, to the disappointment of a few bored instigators, nothing happened.

Impossible though it was to forget his presence, it grew equally impossible to think of him as a threat. By the end of the first month, he, the dragon and the eggs became just another quirky facet of Palmetto life.

Which made Neil standing alone at the end of an open sky port that was not supposed to be open an abberation. It took time to be noticed because he appeared there during the shift in patrols.

(Admittedly, the shift in patrol varied anywhere between fifteen to ninety minutes, depending on who it was and who had distracted them.)

“Uh. Neil?”

Framed by clear, crystal blue sky, Neil flinched.

He did not turn around to look at Nicky and the Minyard twins. That was fine. They looked enough at him.

Nicky repeated, unsure more than suspicious: “Why are you standing there?”

“Where’s your overgrown lizard?”

Neil, again, flinched.

“ _Andrew.”_

“I’m right, aren’t I. Where is she? Finally decide she had enough of hiding in a stinking stable?”

When Neil refused to turn around, Nicky pressed his hand to his mouth and stifled the gasp that wanted to escape.

“Shit. She really has left?”

“More importantly: did she take the eggs?”

“ _Andrew,_ that’s none of our _–”_

“No,” Neil finally replied, the word sharp enough to cut.

“Then there’s nothing to sulkabout. You know what they say: out with the old, in with the new.”

“Dragon eggs don’t just hatch.”

A scoff, light and unconcerned. Provocative. It worked: Neil turned with a look that was ready and willing to kill. “Yeah? What’s it take, a lava bath?”

“A bond,” he replied. “A real bond, with someone the hatchling knows will take care of it.”

“Cute. No wonder they’re dying out with stupid, picky rules like that.”

“So, what,” a cut-in from, surprisingly, Aaron, “your mom’s dragon left because they weren’t hatching for her?”

Eyes lowered to their feet, Neil shrugged.

“Who knows?” Scathing. A frayed nerve. The twins looked mildly taken aback while Nicky shifted on his feet; it was just about the most emotion they’d seen from Neil Josten. Ten seconds, a deep breath and obvious, slow inhale-exhale later, and he moved to shove past them, the sky put to his back.

Nicky murmured to Aaron as he passed, the three not stopping him, “If the hatchlings just know, does that mean it could be any of us? That all we have to do is poke it, and it’ll hatch? And, uh. Bond?”

“How should I know? Ask mister dragon expert.”

Neil didn’t reply. He continued in the direction of the stables, shoulders stiff.

(Andrew, perhaps to rib him further, followed.)

(While he and Neil dissolved into something of an argument- or, really, a one-sided argument, as only Neil sounded riled up by the end-, Nicky and Aaron poked at the eggs.)

(As Nicky discovered on one egg rocking and cracking, the answer to his question was: yes. It only took a touch.)


	18. neil josten paints the town red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: everyone born can only see color during life changing moments.

Color didn’t always herald something bad.

It was just: for Neil, it did.

His mother had assured him he wasn’t strange, that she was the same way and that Hollywood and the news exaggerated color sightings as much as they did everything else. In hindsight, the concerned look she sneaked toward him after that conversation tipped Neil off that it wasn’t normal.

In the end it was just one more not normal thing to add to a lifetime of abnormality, so Neil didn’t let himself dwell on it.

He saw red bleed from a pale man after his father was done with him. He saw the yellowed, sick face of Kevin blanching. He saw Riko wasn’t so different with color: a black and white focus with not a speck of grey to him.

He saw orange and yellow in the fires that engulfed his mother. He missed seeing the sunet and caught the ocean’s glimmering blue only briefly, too distracted with blazing red and billowing grey-blue smoke.

He saw the green of Kevin’s eyes when he walked into Millport’s locker room through red-blue-yellow spots of pain.

He saw cream carpet be dyed red when Aaron drove the racquet into Drake’s head.

He saw nothing at Evermore. Nothing had changed.

There were supposed to be good moments. A first kiss or a victory on the court or a beautiful mountain range or, or, or.

(The issue was, most reported moments of color involved someone else.)

(Neil wasn’t an exception. It was just that the bad far outweighed the good.)

He’d only seen it a handful of times, but he decided he hated the color red. Black and white and the greys in between were far, far better than anything involving red.

Anxiety and fear roiled in his gut on the day Andrew first kissed him. Nothing changed; not realizing he’d been waiting for it to until it hadn’t and despair at this, at his finite future, at what memories he’d failed to make, filled his throat

Andrew told him, “I won’t be like them. I won’t let you let me be.”

It was arguably the worst ending to a first kiss Neil had, and that included the red-and-purple bruises he’d seen on his skin after his mother had caught him kissing Nicole and beaten him until he saw sense.

Thin blue stretched behind Andrew as he pulled back. Neil blinked. Andrew’s clothing remained black, though it lightened with blue in the sunlight. His skin remained pale, but its hues were pink. His hair matched what Neil had heard of gold’s splendor.

Neil wanted to say, _Wait. Please._

But there wasn’t a hint of red to be found, and though it was quite possibly an ending, it didn’t feel as final as any other moment of color Neil had experienced.

(He’d seen Andrew in color the night he’d sealed their promise, but his eyes had been on imagined maroon under his nails and the dirt scuffed to the side of his shoes. It wasn’t the same.)

Andrew left before he could memorize the exact shade of his mouth or specks of light in his eyes. Neil told himself he would have another chance, and half-way believed it.


	19. neil josten spends time as a paper weight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: neil falling asleep on andrew.

“What if Sharknado was a real concern?”

“Are you saying a tornado filled with sharks is not already a real concern?”

A hand patted his cheek.

“You’re learning.”

“So stupid.”

“Excuse me? Who’s the one without any imagination, again?”

Neil shoved at Andrew’s shoulder. One eyebrow raised, Andrew nevertheless kept his gaze on the T.V.

The hour wasn’t late, but the easy afternoon stretching ahead of them was rare enough to be exhausting. Neil’s second spring break at Palmetto saw Kevin taking time to fly out to visit Thea while Nicky flew to Germany and Katelyn took Aaron somewhere further south; the rest of the remaining Foxes had no want or reason to protest Andrew and Neil driving out to Columbia for a week alone.

A _week._

They had to fit in practice - Thea wasn’t enough to distract Kevin from reminding Neil of possible improvements for his exercise routine - but not on the first Saturday of vacation. The first Saturday of vacation was for them, the couch and the T.V. In fact, the last two were optional; Neil was happy enough with the first.

 _Always._ He’s _always_ be happy enough with the first, even if Andrew didn’t accept it.

Light streamed through the windows, warming where it stretched along on Neil’s legs. The television droned. He tuned it out for the quiet sound of his own steady heartbeat and, when he tipped his head against Andrew’s shoulder, ear to pressed to thin cotton, the steady sounds to be found there.

Andrew leaned his head against Neil’s. His arm, previously stretched along the couch’s back, moved down to hug Neil closer. Pale skin, uncovered by sleeves or armbands, caught Neil’s eye. From calloused hands to the jut of a wrist to scarred skin to muscle bound to bone, from the arm along his side to thin cotton over a broad chest tapering into a narrow waist, Neil appreciated the physicality that made up Andrew Minyard.

Steadfast. He was unwavering, he was unbroken, he was everything Neil needed and then some.

“Like the view?” Andrew drawled, voice edged in annoyance.

Neil hummed assent. Then, with honesty, “It’s nothing compared to what goes on inside.”

Andrew’s arm tightened.

“You unimaginative fuck.”

True.

But there was warmth to be found there, in word and action. Neil didn’t bother with a reply; he let his eyes close, tucked as he was against Andrew’s side, and focused on the distant heartbeat that very nearly matched his. The rise and fall of a chest. The thumb smoothing slow circles into his hip. The warm air, the warm sun, the warm body beside his.

The peace in and out of his head.

The quiet.

The home Andrew had made him believe he could hold onto.

—

A click of the remote cut the television’s drone. For a moment, the room held nothing but the absence of sound.

Then, voice a murmur:

“Neil?”

Nothing and no one moved.

(It had been some time since Neil was nothing or no one.)

Andrew sighed, mostly for himself. His leg had fallen asleep twenty minutes prior. He was trapped at an awkward angle, the couch’s arm digging in right under his ribs. One move would wake Neil; even at his most comfortable, he startled awake as easily as Andrew.

He was, by the slow rise and fall of his chest and depth of his sleep, at his most comfortable.

Andrew did not move.


	20. neil josten goes to prison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: what if nathan wesninski hadn't gotten early bail?
> 
> for context, [please read this](https://unkingly.tumblr.com/post/148539340969/so-if-neils-father-never-actually-got-an-early). in summary: Neil ends up in prison after shooting Riko [on Ichirou's order], the Foxes fall apart, and Andrew becomes a lawyer in order to bust him out.

“While it’s out of my hands,” he said, “word has it you’re being considered for parole.”

At that, Neil pressed palms to reddened eyes. Shaky lungs sucked in a shaky breath.

“Had they informed you?”

A slower exhale.

Wry: “They wouldn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”

When he blinked back into the grey visitor’s room, a cold smile across thick plexiglas greeted him. Andrew Minyard officially remained his lawyer, but with the appeal to the secondary courts come and gone, he had no real reason to visit with his client. And so, he visited the same as anyone else.

He wasn’t the first name on Nathaniel Wesninski’s visitor log, but he was the first in six years.

Neil smoothed nervous hands down his legs. These days, thoughts took ages upon ages to grasp; words, even longer. He appeared broken. It was a good look to wrangle a sympathetic jury– the issue was, it never went away.

Andrew asked, “If granted parole, where would you stay?”

Neil looked at him.

After a long silence - not uncommon for either of them, but especially Neil - he added, “That was an invitation.”

A dry laugh crackled its way from Neil’s throat. It grew. It spread, senseless and explosive as splintered wood.

Andrew dropped his practiced smile.

“I’m never getting out of here,” Neil informed him. “No matter what you do.”

“While I’ve long become aware of your startling lack of legal knowledge, whether or not you’re granted parole isn’t on me.”

“Everything,” a thin body curved forward, mouth a mere breath from the mic, “hinges on you, Andrew Minyard.”

—

Twenty-three years and counting.

At twenty-two, holes in the high security prison’s management came to startling, stark light, especially in regards to its lifetime prisoners.

At twenty-one, Andrew made the case of his career by shifting the verdict on Nathaniel Wesninski from first to second degree murder. Though it had been Neil’s finger on the trigger, the heinous damage inflicted on Riko Moriyama’s corpse was attributed posthumously to Lola and her accomplice, Romero.

At twenty, Andrew overturned Nathaniel’s fault in his mother’s forgery.

At nineteen, Andrew had asked, _Were you coerced?_

He knew the answer. He had Kevin’s ear, and all the despair that went with it. The answer was yes. The answer had to be yes. Though a convict’s word against a well-respected businessman’s would get them nowhere, it was a start.

Neil had said, _No._

A pause. A glance that Neil, for once, held.

Neil emphasized, _No. I wasn’t coerced._

Andrew understood he was perhaps the only one to still know the true answer to _were you coerced?_

But, he hadn’t gotten as far as he had by taking the horse to the river and beating it if it didn’t drink. After a moment, he amended, a whisper of sarcasm in his voice (just for Neil), _Were you of sound mind?_

Neil looked at him. It was a pause that would become as familiar as a well-worn memory, heralding a moment wherein Neil expected nothing and accepted anything.

So when Andrew told him, _You weren’t,_ he nodded along.

—

“It’s just as well,” Kevin told him over a round of beers. “You’re good, but you’re not that good.”

Aaron and Nicky called him crazy for taking on the case at all. They wanted to know the details just as much as they didn’t want to know. He wasn’t sure which of them informed the Boyds of his making an appeal for Neil’s ruling or if one of them had found out accidentally, but he received a heated call from Dan eight months into the process demanding that he catch her up on every detail regarding Neil.

(He obliged by hanging up on her. He remembered her quiet surrender to how the media twisted Neil’s name, and didn’t care if she grew to regret it.)

(In any case, he was fairly sure Nicky fed her regular updates. Unlike Kevin, Aaron or Andrew, he’d actually kept in contact with their classmates.)

For all that had changed, some constants remained: for one, Andrew was self-destructive, not suicidal, and for two, Neil never stopped lying.

—

“Shouldn’t you know better? Murderers don’t get parole.”

“You were nineteen. You’re now forty-two.”

Neil’s nose wrinkled. “That makes _you_ ancient. Do you still smoke a pack a day?”

“If it’s been a bad day.” He let his tone say, _I’ll need one after this._

Neil almost, almost smiled at him.

“You have fourteen years left on your sentence, but–”

Neil’s face blanked.

Andrew sighed through his nose.

“This visit is over,” Neil muttered. “I told you I didn’t want to talk about parole.”

He had said no such thing. Andrew didn’t bother pointing it out, because Neil struggled to hold a full conversation enough as it was, and bad days, like Andrew’s cigarettes, burned him out too fast to worry about anything but how to clean up the collateral damage.

—

Twenty-four years and counting.

—

Twenty-five years and counting.

—

One day during Andrew’s monthly visit, Neil asked him, “Did I dream the trial? Has it not happened yet?”

Andrew kept his expression schooled. “No. It’s happened.”

Neil sat back, his metal chair creaking and cuff links clinking. He looked through Andrew, his fingers laced tight in his lap. “Huh. Is Kevin still dead?”

“Kevin never died.”

He did not say, _Kevin is alive and well._ One of those things were true; the other, not so much.

“Huh.” A beat. “Has anyone tried to kill you because of me?”

He had received a few death threats from older Raven fans. He had one close call at his office with a homemade bomb under his car. Nothing from the crime family Neil would always reference but never, ever name– in truth, Andrew knew nothing of the Moriyama family’s state of affairs. His primary goal was freeing Neil; only if he failed in that had he planned to go after the root. He was not so delusional as to think he would survive the attempt.

“No,” he answered, because no one who would have succeeded had tried.

Neil tipped his head all the way back. He breathed relief, full of trust born almost purely from necessity. “Huh.”

As it would happen, that was a bad day for Andrew.

—

Twenty-five and a half years later, Andrew Minyard received a call at his office.

His secretary forwarded it to him with note of caution. Though the caller claimed to be a client, the name provided matched none of their records. Though, his secretary tittered, hadn’t Nathaniel Wesninski gone by Neil Josten?

“This was the number on the card you gave me,” the voice on the other end said, quiet and tremulous. A long, long pause followed, louder than the words and thrice as breakable. Tempting as it was to interrupt, Andrew waited him out.

It was worth it. The voice that continued almost, almost sounded like the runaway and liar Andrew had devoted his career to freeing.

“Your card design is boring as,” here, a shorter pause, possibly an attempt at emphasis, “hell. Almost threw it out. Should’ve shredded it. Would’ve, if I had a shredder. Or an open window to throw it out of.”

“What’s stopping you now?”

A laugh, wet and choked and packed with fear. “What would I do with a shredder? I’ve only got one of your cards. That’s… a second of use, tops.”

At his desk, Andrew checked his schedule. It would make for an aggravating tomorrow, but there wasn’t anything he couldn’t cancel.

“I have to stay in Columbia. As part of my parole.” A beat. A silence that Andrew recognized to mean Neil had a hundred and one things he wanted to add, but words, as always these days, failed him. Briefly, Andrew wondered if it ever frustrated Neil, if he even remembered his silver tongue enough to miss it.

“My office is there,” Andrew filled in. In contrast to Neil, he’d spent the last two-plus decades perfecting his presentation. “I’ve been thinking of moving downtown for years.”

 _Huh_ , Neil breathed. With the right amount of charity, it sounded teasing.

But Andrew wasn’t the charitable sort. He recognized it for what it was: on one hand, terrified. On the other, hopeful. He could easily imagine the expression that expected nothing and accepted the worst.

Neil had always worn hope awkwardly. After years in the system, he treated it as if too long of exposure would scald his skin.

Maybe it would. Nonetheless, Andrew offered, “The apartment I was considering has a guest bedroom.”

Another long, long pause.

“I’m sorry.”

Andrew closed his eyes. “I hate apologies.”

“You hate me.” Fondness in Neil’s voice, echoed by a warmth Andrew hadn’t felt for years in his own chest. “Remember?”

“You’re the one with the shoddy memory.” And the shoddy _everything_ , he wanted to add, except that laugh– yes, that one, the one that surprised Neil every time it bubbled up. “You’re at the precinct? I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Thank you,” Neil said. “You were…”

Again, words failed him.

That was fine. Andrew heard him all the same.


	21. andrew minyard in wonderland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: pre-andreil snippet. 
> 
> in summary: andrew on drugs.

Was Kevin going to scream? Andrew hoped he would. He looked like he wanted to.

“Just take the pills.” Kevin pressed plastic into fingers unfurled. Greed closed his hand. Plastic protested. “This is the last dose before tonight’s game.”

He looked ready to cry.

“Andrew,” Kevin hissed. “Take your medication.”

“Will you hold my hand while we cross the street, too?” He batted his eyelashes. Kevin shoved water into his other hand. “What if I ask real nicely?”

Kevin said nothing. Maybe those words hadn’t made it past his lips. The wrong ones always did, the right ones never would.

He took his happy pills. He gave the plastic and empty glass back. He heard himself laugh at Kevin’s clear distaste and supposed the pills were aptly named.

The world stabilized thirty minutes after that. In a few hours, they’d arrive at the stadium; in a few hours, he’d have a _whoopsie!_ and miss his dosage; in a few hours, when he recognized that the world had stabilized, it wouldn’t mean everything on the edge fuzzed out while everything in the middle melted into goo.

“Right on the dot,” he sighed, slouched in the bus’s back seat, hands on his knees. The floor jumbled and hopped, the windows rattled and popped. His knees hopped and popped with them, feet tap-tap-tapping. “You have this down to an art, Day.”

Day glanced over at his name, but quickly returned to his conversation with the liar.

Nicky gave him a cautious look. A worried look. A _you’re a danger to yourself and to us_ look.

Andrew smiled for him. By how quickly Nicky turned away, it hadn’t helped. Boo-hoo-hoo, his cousin thought he was one straw from a broken camel. No, no, he was one crayon short of a happy child. No. Not wrong, but not right.

Typical.

His cousin thought he’d as soon break his fingers as let him have a shred of peace.

Typical.

His brother would not even glance over.

Typical.

Eyes closed, he heard: “Could you knock off the giggling? You’re a goalkeeper, not a B-list horror villain.”

Eyes opened, he saw: a rabbit with the audacity to say that to his face.

For him, Andrew smiled to show off his big bad wolf teeth.

The liar was unimpressed. He rolled his eyes. He said, sarcastic as ever, “Thank you.”

He lingered.

Or, he did not immediately turn away, and for Andrew, who was surrounded by those that turned away (they had to, by his design; it wasn’t as if they could _walk_ away), that was enough.

Enough for a point of interest. That was all.

Enough to hold his attention. That was all.

Enough to solidify the world. That was all.

_That’s quite enough._

(Like any good side-effect, the runaway slid under the radar until he was in too deep to uproot.)

(The bottle hadn’t warned about this, but then, with a name like _happy pills_ , Andrew wasn’t surprised at its continual disappointment.)

“Have something on your mind, rabbit?”

He expected a scowl. He received a curious look. A patient look. An _I’m trying to work you out - do you mind holding still? I can come back later_ look.

Anger came, anger left. For a brief moment, he was aware of the fabric under his hands, the seat at his back, the pull of the runaway’s mouth as he bit the inside of his cheek. The flex of a throat as he swallowed, the moment a question formed behind blue eyes, the seconds he watched Andrew and only Andrew.

I’d like to take you apart.

The question stalled. Startled, the rabbit jumped. “You what?”

“Whoops,” Andrew admitted. “Did I say that aloud?”

His new look said, _I don’t trust you._ Andrew allowed him that; it was the smart choice.

It didn’t say, _you’re dangerous to you and yours._ It hadn’t said that for an age and a half.

The liar was a fool.

“Never mind,” said the fool. “We’ll talk later.”

Without others around. Ah, right. Their game.

“Fun, fun,” Andrew chirped, and maybe meant it. “It better be good.”

He was waved off. He was turned away from.

His medication whispered that the runaway couldn’t possibly have turned away forever. And there, _there_ , laid something so new, he almost believed it.


	22. kevin day is a knight in dented armor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: kandreil, beauty and the beast au.

 

A bruised hand reached for a bruised and battered neck.

Kevin swatted the investigative hand away with a scowl. Though his voice scratched from the ring of purple and shallow red around his throat, he was determined to convey his annoyance with Neil. “Mind yourself for once, you suicidal maniac.”

“Those are from the Monster,” Neil replied, ignoring Kevin’s eye roll. “What’d you do? Eat his favorite kibble bits?”

The sarcasm in Kevin’s expression broke before it could even be given voice. He swallowed and winced, a hand raising to hover around his neck. His mouth opened, words halting. “I…–”

“He knew who took you.”

Neil’s attention snapped to the door. Kevin, meanwhile, flinched back.

Through the door stepped the beast of the hour: ridged horns curled under ragged ears, shaggy mud-colored and soot-speckled fur spilling in waves from face to clawed foot. The Monster was every beast ever rumored to stalk through dark forests come to life. He lived in a castle and dressed like a blackened Prince, though all those living in the village below accused him of eating the royal family.

Neil had come to know the Monster fairly well through months of imprisonment. Voluntary, mind: Kevin and the enchanted servants that claimed to have once been human were a different story, but he had arrived seeking sanctuary from his father. What observation he had made and had told, when his father’s men had arrived at the Monster’s door dressed as angered villagers, was that no matter his appearance, the Monster had not once eaten a human. While he had undoubtedly murdered a human, Neil was fairly sure the human deserved it.

“Of course they did,” Kevin had told him. “He’s human under all that fur and fang.”

“He just acts mindless so Nicky won’t hound him about his awful table manners?” Kevin had rolled his eyes at him. Neil hadn’t grinned, but he came close. The Knight had once been intimidating. Now, he was too easy to rile to astound. “Will he ever be human again?”

“Once the curse breaks.”

“How does–”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“And I told you, I don’t believe you.”

Kevin had rolled his eyes again, hands thrown up in exasperation. It was a well-practiced gesture – probably, even before being taken as hostage at the castle after challenging the Monster to an honorable dual, he has cause to use it. “Doesn’t change that I can’t tell you the answer.”

(Except it made it a won’t, not a can’t.)

His father’s right hand woman, Lola, had deserved her death. If the Monster hadn’t tracked her carriage down before they reached his father’s estate, he was sure he would not be alive.

But he had, and he was. And now he could look at the beast that curled his lip at Kevin, scaring the man into backing up with a paled face, and Neil could say, “Leave him alone. I told him not to tell.”

 _What for?_ the Monster demanded, more snarl than word. Paranoia and mistrust mingled into betrayal, an emotion Neil hadn’t thought him capable of as it meant he had enough trust in Neil to be betrayed. The look and sound remained in Neil’s mind long after he gave his answer and it had faded.

That night, the burns on his cheek and upper arms healing slowly under Aaron (the clock’s) direction and Kevin’s application, Neil confessed as many truths as he could to the watchful Monster. By the end, close to the entirety of the staff had made their way into the room. As silence fell on the last of Neil’s truths (his father’s connection to the local duke, Kengo Moriyama), he felt curiously secure. None of the panic he expected rose. Maybe it was because he could trick himself into thinking he was only speaking to Kevin and the Monster, as everyone else naturally looked inanimate. More likely, he had finally found his home.

After a moment, the Monster ordered everyone out. Minus the bed Neil lay on, the dresser and one candlestick, the room cleared. Months ago, they had scattered at the first sound of the Monster’s footfalls; now, they left as orderly as they arrived.

Neil was asked, “You trust me?”

Though bandaged and too stiff to bend, Neil couldn’t help reaching for the other. White disappeared into shaggy brown, the beast carefully stretching his neck out to lay his head on Neil’s chest. On closer inspection, the Monster had deep gashes from his altercation with Lola and the others; it darkened his fur even further, tangling hairs into clotted clumps.

“Yes. Always.”

Dark eyes closed. Shadow seeped from ragged fur to the blankets, black spreading thick and potent as disease. It happened too quickly for Neil to evade.

The Monster barely seemed to notice. Which was surprising, since the shadows came from him.

Before Neil’s eyes, the beast shed fur and skin, horn and claw. These things turned to black as they fell away, though the goop weighed nothing. He shrunk, muscle constricting crooked bone into a human shape.

His clothes became much too big for him.

Wary eyes cracked open, and Neil saw hazel. On his first shift back, a hand pushing him off Neil’s chest, a pained wince ran though him.

“You’re much shorter than I imagined.”

“That’s the first thing you have to say?” The Monster, now human, snapped.

—

Neil smiled.

—

He continued smiling even as the staff, now human shaped, busted in with various states of dress.

Kevin, disgruntled and covering his eyes with a hand at the sight of who Neil quickly learned was Nicky the cast iron pot, waited the celebration out by the door.

At some point he wandered close enough for Neil to properly appraise his neck. Andrew (the Monster’s name, just as Kevin and Aaron and Nicky but no one else said) refused to leave his side, and in fact roughly ordered Kevin to _stop cowering like an anxious squire and take your place._

His place, he professed, was at his prince’s side. As the Minyards were the royalty that had been rumored to be eaten, it fit. Andrew was as uninterested in politics as a human as he had been as a beast.

(He was, however, much more interested in kissing both his curse breaker and knight.)

(It worked out for the best. Katelyn and Aaron made for much better rulers.)


	23. andrew minyard is not okay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: andrew, age thirteen, attending a mandatory sex education class.
> 
>  **WARNING** for unchecked trauma and references to abuse/ self-harm/ rape/ eighth graders/ canon-typical problems. andrew is not a happy camper. **proceed with caution.**

Every eighth grader knew when health class had sex ed week. Out of class, boys either bragged or groaned while girls giggled or huffed. In class, everyone was a blushing, embarrassed mess, with eyes averted and heads down.

The first class started with the boys being sent to the gym for _a talk_ with the football coach while girls stayed behind for their own _talk_ with the health teacher. Everyone wilted under the pressure in class except the class clowns, Timothy and Sarah, of whom were also the loudest in the halls about sex ed week.

The teachers generally rolled their eyes or turned away. The younger kids were disinterested, impressed, terrified or a mix of all the above.

The first class wasn’t bad. In the second class- genders reunited- diagrams were passed out. That wasn’t bad.

In the third class, they jumped straight from anatomy lessons to the varied and horrifying diseases one could catch from protected or unprotected sex.

There were pictures.

A lot of pictures.

“Dude,” Heather Franklin, avid tennis player and friend to most everyone, whispered, “are you, like, okay?”

He ignored her in favor of the teacher. The pictures continued. Chlamydia. Gonorrhea. Herpes.

Behind him, Timothy snickered. _Super herpes_ floated from the back of the room to the front.

“Um.” From the corner of his eye, he saw Heather lean away from him. She had guts even talking to him - most people didn’t. “Not to be rude. But. Could you quit tapping your foot?”

He quit tapping his foot. Not because she asked, but because he hadn’t realized he had been.

A girl ahead of him glanced back, quickly flicked her eyes from him to Heather, and then faced forward. She didn’t move fast enough for him to miss her raised eyebrow look of _what’s up with the weirdo today?_

The teacher asked for questions. No one raised their hand.

The teacher moved on to contraceptives.

In the back, some boy - probably not Timothy, but his friend - mimed a girl moaning. The teacher pretended not to hear him, though those around him snickered and giggled.

Heather’s friend glanced back again, her eye catching his before flitting away.

It was annoying. It was really, really annoying. The whole day was shit, the kids in the back were shit, and here this girl was, being an annoying shit right in front of him. His foot started tapping again, which he _of course_ noticed. The restlessness gnawed at him; he hadn’t cared about anything in school in years, but this class, this day, this _stupid girl_ , really bothered him. She kept avoiding looking at him like he was a freak. Like she knew something.

There was no way she knew anything. The rumor mill pegged him for a cutter and a druggie, the other obnoxious bubbly cookie-cutter kids avoiding him at lunch, but he didn’t care. They didn’t _really_ know. If anybody knew, then Cass would know.

Cass could not know.

It was his business. Not hers. Not anybody else’s. His and Drake’s. That was what Drake said. That was the only promise Drake kept. This girl thought she knew something? _She didn’t know shit._

“Nosy bitch.”

Her eyes snapped back to his.

His thumb dug into his wrist bone. He hunched further, his sweater bunched up and mouth twisted into a sneer.

( _A sweater in this heat? Andrew, you’ll pass out!)_

_(Cass, I said I’d be fine.)_

_(Well, fine, but don’t you come crying to me when you dehydrate. I warned you!_ )

Heather turned on him immediately. “You did _not_ just say what I think you said. Not cool, Andrew.”

He said, “Fuck off, slut. Bet you already have herpes.”

She gasped. Her friend’s eyes widened.

Behind them, Timothy and his friends whooped.

“Mr. Doe!”

He dropped his eyes to his hands and jabbed his thumb harder into his wrist. It didn’t do much. Fucking stupid. Why’d he say that? He was supposed to hold it together. He’d told himself to hold it together. It was just some stupid classes.

Whatever. He’d said it. Shit day just got worse.

Shit day, shit week. Shit class. Shit pictures. Shit girls. Shit boys.

Sex was _disgusting_ and _painful_ and none of them knew _shit._

Shit, shit, shit.

“We didn’t do anything!” Heather cried. “He’s being mean to Jenny and me for no reason!”

“I know, Ms. Franklin. Mr. Doe, I won’t tolerate that language in my class.”

He looked up.

The board boasted the advantages to abstinence until they were older and in a long-term union. A father and mother swung a little girl between them, looking happy and secure and old.

Nothing had been mentioned about two guys having sex, he realized. Other eighth graders were stupid about it, the words gay and homo tossed around as frequently as dumb and idiot, but adults kept away from the topic altogether. Even here, apparently, they kept away from it.

Probably because two guys didn’t have kids. Two guys couldn’t have kids. Two guys weren’t happy or secure or long term. Sex wouldn’t hurt as much for a girl.

Andrew didn’t want to be a girl, but that part didn’t sound so bad (except more than not wanting anything to do with sex, he didn’t want a kid, which further proved abstinence as the best option).

(If only he could choose.)

Andrew’s ass hurt ( _because he fell from climbing a tree_ ). His throat hurt ( _because he’d tried to drink hot sauce_ ). His jaw hurt ( _because he’d been smiling too muc– come on, who’s going to believe that? **my** little brother can do better than that_ ).

“This class is stupid,” he said.

A few kids giggled. Heather and her friend did not.

“If you can’t be mature about this,” the teacher began, “then perhaps you should leave, Mr. Doe.”

He didn’t want to leave. Cass thought school was important. She’d had to collect him from the principle’s office three times last term, and each time she’d been understanding but firm that he needed to clean up his act, and he’d appreciated her disappointment as much as he’d loathed it, because – fuck, she’d cared, she cared, she really really cared, and he didn’t care about anything but he cared about her caring about him and if she thought he was a disappointment.

He didn’t want to leave the class, even if it was stupid and shitty and full of idiots pretending they knew anything.

“Well?” The teacher prompted.

He stared back to the table. His guts were in knots. His eyes felt hot.

It was startling and confusing and surprising and stupid, stupid, stupid, as dumb as two shitty parents with their shitty kid and the shitty girl ahead of him and, “Apologize, Mr. Doe, and then I’d like you to move up here, near me,” and he grabbed his books and pencil and _did_ , but he made a point to slam his chair and make Heather jump and keep his head down.

The students went silent.

The tension built.

The class continued. He heard none of it, too busy scratching deep, dark lines into his notebook.

(That night in the bathroom, he bled. It helped release the pressure.)

(That night in the bedroom, he bled. He told Drake, feeling annoyed and tired and hollowed out and ready for it to be over when it hadn’t even started, acutely aware of Cass sleeping down the hall and Drake’s sweaty fingers in his hair, _Put on a condom_.)

(He was making a joke to himself, the shitty class’s useless lessons on his brain instead of what or who stood in front of him.)

( _Why?_ The hands holding his scabbed, throbbing red wrists over his head tightened. The voice was mocking. One hurt. One felt vindictive. None of it was funny.  _Not like you can get pregnant._ )


	24. kevin day lives a hard knock life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING** for explicit smut. 
> 
> for the prompt: some andriel smut in a semi-public place.

Andrew had two fingers in Neil's mouth, five wrapped around Neil's dick, and five-odd inches up Neil's ass when the dorm door rattled open.

They froze.

The door in between had not been shut, and their bed was in perfect view of the entrance. Fortunately, matters had developed from laying down to sleep, because otherwise they would not have been covered by a thick blanket when Kevin came back early from the post-game celebration and shuffled his way from the main room to the bathroom.

The bathroom door opened and shut. Glassware clinked, which meant Kevin was going for his toothbrush. He wouldn't be long. He must have been three sheets to the wind in terms of drunkenness, but he wasn't blind.

Andrew squashed the urge to continue anyway, pulling his fingers from Neil's mouth and hushing him with a quiet, "Quit panting."

Then he bit his lip to stifle a hiss, as Neil latched onto his fingertips like a dog with a bone and very pointedly rolled his hips. 

The first part wasn't sexy. The second part was.

As if to make up for it, Neil replaced his teeth with lips, tongue wrapping around and lapping at sensitive finger pads. More likely he was adamant Andrew continue, as he rolled his hips forward and snapped them back, his hand tangling with Andrew's around his dick. His back arched. He pointedly attempted to keep his mouth occupied with Andrew's fingers and not with making his usual loud, obscene noises.

If it was a show to convince Andrew to continue, it worked beautifully.

"If you can keep quiet for once in your life," Andrew muttered against his ear, reluctantly tugging his fingers from Neil's mouth to better grip and angle their hips.

"I can be quiet," Neil replied with his outside voice.

Andrew stilled his hips and hand. Neil whined. Neil pressed back, paused, and in blessed silence, admitted the point.

If they had wanted to contest the point further, they were too late: the bathroom door opened. Kevin stepped out, his eyes bloodshot and squinting until he found the bedroom. By the deer in the headlights look to follow, he realized the bedroom door was open and, by some sense of manners Riko hadn't taught and Wymack certainly hadn't genetically passed on, quickly flicked the lights off.

Andrew and Neil kept still.

Kevin then proceeded to stumble around in the dark, making far more racket than he would have in the light. He found his dresser by divine intervention alone, though he went through two wrong drawers before finding his sleep shirt.

Andrew felt Neil's full-body flinch when he redirected his attention from watching Kevin to the thumb he rubbed over Neil's slit. The shifting sheet made Kevin freeze and glance over. 

The bed was too creaky to move on without giving themselves dead away, but hands could shift under blankets just fine. Neil's heart pounded a mile a minute. Andrew, fairly pleased with the tough spot Neil put himself into, gave him a squeeze.

Neil, Andrew was fairly sure, near bit through his cheek. 

Kevin continued to dress for bed.

Andrew continued to put every trick he'd learned Neil enjoyed to use with his hand, only slow enough to not make undue noise.

A fine shiver ran down Neil's spine. Andrew was man enough to admit he might have miscalculated as Neil clenched around him and he could not in any feasible way move his hips. But then, he had far more practice and a much easier time with remaining silent and still. 

The problem was, he wanted to move. That threw an annoying wrench into his go-to methods of locking down.

Bed springs creaked as Kevin slipped under his sheets. Because Neil was not sneaky in the least when he had his pants around his knees and Andrew's anything on him, Neil used the noise as a cover-up for a low, breathy sigh.

It sounded unbelievably wanting.

It sounded desperate.

It sent a jolt right to Andrew's groin, and he set his teeth to Neil's shoulder to stymy the need. Neat and beautiful and tight and hot, Neil shoved his hips back and breathed another longing breath. His chest heaved with the tense silence of someone trying very, very hard not to make noise, for all it was doomed to fail.

Andrew squeezed his hand again in warning, but Kevin appeared too busy struggling to get comfortable to hear.

Neil's foot hooked behind Andrew's ankle. Andrew's toes curled. He picked up the pace with his hand while he sucked a hickey onto Neil's neck, all suction and flicking tongue and nipping teeth. Carefully, carefully, Andrew rolled his hips. Slowly, slowly, he thumbed over Neil's head and stroked down his shaft, Neil's clumsy fingers following along.

"Fuck," Neil breathed.

"Fuck?" Kevin asked.

"Fuck," Andrew agreed.

"Are you two _fucking?_ " Kevin asked, louder this time. "What the fuck!"

"You're drunk," Andrew told him, as if that would help. It probably would in the morning. 

"I'm not that drunk! Leave a warning! Jesus fucking-- disgusting- _I was going to sleep here._ "

"Never said you couldn't--" Andrew swallowed his next sound out of respect to his reputation as the quiet one, "sleep here."

Kevin did not take that well. He left post-haste, riled into a tantrum that pulled Matt and the others from the party next door. Luckily, they had the good sense not to barge in.

"What happened to keeping quiet?" Andrew asked Neil in a voice that was entirely civil and not at all an uncontrolled, deep-throated husk.

In reply, Neil twisted to lay on his stomach and put Andrew above him, lifted his hips with purpose, and moaned loud and empathetic. By the resulting silence followed with laughter and anger that filtered in from the hallway, Kevin heard him.

It was borderline exhibitionist. Or maybe it was just to get under Kevin's skin.

Either way, Andrew did not complain.


	25. andrea minyard and the trials of man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: fem!andreil, part 1.

There is nothing in this world that can convince Andrea that Naomi is real.

She had appeared in baggy clothes, torn sneakers, and the face of a victim. In the months to follow, she had proved herself anything but: cornered in the club, she’d paid someone to hide her secrets and knock her out. Cornered in the court, she fought and won her place. Cornered in a Hemmick brand family dinner, she nonetheless left to find Andrea.

Time and again, she showed up at just the right moment and said just what Andrea needed to hear. It was impossible.

It came to be that she had lied in their game of truths, and Andrea couldn’t find it in her to hold it against Naomi. That should have been impossible.

But she was under her skin, in her veins, in her every waking thought. Andrea couldn’t remember the last time an interest had lasted so long. She had convinced herself Naomi was a product of the medication, because there was no way she was real.

Naomi let herself be kissed. She didn’t follow when Andrea told her not to.

Naomi let herself be kissed again. She followed when Andrea didn’t tell her not to.

There was no way this was Andrea’s life.

She bowed under Andrea’s hand. Her fingers curled in rumpled blankets, her eyes were warm and heavy, her smile as bad as Andrea’s on the drugs, dopey and high and all for Andrea. She goaded, “Weren’t you going to show me something?” as if she wasn’t a haphazard mess across a cabin’s bed. She blew a breath to get the strand of dark hair out of her mouth, and levered herself up to her elbows to track where Andrea went.

The small _oh_ she made when Andrea nosed at her inner thigh and slid her hands under the elastic of her panties was satisfying, if premature. But that was standard procedure for Naomi: everything Andrea did seemed new to her, new and exciting and _wanted._ A kiss in the morning weighed the same as a kiss in the evening. It was absurd. They’d been kissing for nearly two months; how could Naomi continue to find it a marvel?

Impossible.

Fool’s gold, disappointment hidden behind a shining veneer. That was Naomi. That had to be.

The sole of her foot was ticklish, which Andrea discovered because she liked to drag out the dream that was exploring every inch of Naomi. Andrea sat back on her knees and lifted Naomi’s foot, her lips set first at the solid ankle bone before she mouthed lower. For her troubles, she nearly had her face kicked in.

Above her, Naomi giggled, “Whoops.”

_Impossible._

And then, impossibly, she was gone.

The riot wasn’t much fun, but the aftermath of Naomi Josten missing was far worse.

Andrea felt like she was floating. When Kevin wouldn’t reply to Wymack’s question of _if he knew anything_ , it was someone else who took Andrea’s hands and wrapped them around Kevin’s neck. She could scarcely hear through the blood rushing past her ears; she could scarcely feel Wymack trying to drag her off. She was sure she bit someone in the resulting struggle, as her mouth joined her ears in being full of blood; she also had a few strands of hair in her clenched hand, but the black strands were easily tied to Kevin, who stared at her as if he hadn’t _let Naomi be kidnapped._

(Kevin hadn’t let Naomi do anything, but that was a charitable way to think that Andrea wasn’t generous enough to adhere to.)

When the Foxes met the FBI, they were as boring as Andrea had thought they’d be. They brought the Foxes to Naomi’s hospital room, and they barely fought on letting the team rejoin Naomi (actually Natalie Wesninski, which lifted the corner of Renee’s mouth alone), as one Agent Browning admitted he hoped they would be able to calm her down enough to talk. She was hysterical, they said. She hadn’t stopped crying since she’d woken up.

When the team filed in, Andrea knew immediately that the FBI had been played for fools.

Andrea had seen Naomi work her magic in post-game crowds and, once from a very drunk and very forward flannel-clad man, at Sweetie’s. Once they thought she was out of earshot, men would call her exotic and mysterious; once she was in range, men would ask her boring questions in broken, heavily accented Spanish; men wanted to help her, wanted to see her happy and smiling, wanted her thanks and, most of all, her attention. They opened up to her like flowers under the sun.

She didn’t like doing it. Unlike Allison, who enjoyed dangling a boy on a string, Naomi shied from it.

 _I can, but it’s too dangerous_ , she’d once said. She wore baggy clothes and no make up for a reason beyond expensive and time. _I don’t like how they look at me. It makes leaving harder than it should be._

No matter her thoughts on it, Naomi made for the picture of a pretty victim. Even with half her face swathed in gauze and scars peeking from the low collar of her hospital gown, her split lip trembled and her long eyelashes glittered with tears.

When the Foxes filed in, she renewed her sobbing. Her ankle was handcuffed to the metal bed post; the skin under it wasn’t red, wasn’t raw. She hadn’t fought. She’d cooperated. She was only terrified.

“Twenty minutes,” Agent Browning warned, in a tone that said he didn’t mind if they took longer. Natalie Wesninski was the daughter of the Butcher, yes, but she was also just what she looked like: a nineteen year old girl caught in the middle of a firefight. She had been too young to understand what her father did. Her mother had wanted her to have a normal life. That was why she ran. A normal life was all she wanted.

They believed it. They had no reason not to. Naomi had been trained in the art of looking young and weak, in giving enough to satisfy but not enough to be honest, and she was very good at what she was trained to do.

The moment the door shut, the sobbing petered out. Instead, she smiled - a watery but real one, wide as the day was long.

Andrea lengthened her stride and put herself at Naomi’s side. Her impossible dream was coming true; she needed to touch her, to feel for herself if the illusion held.

She did. The bandages and the skin underneath, the blood and tears, they belonged to Naomi Josten, and they were as real as she was.

They ended up taking close to an hour, the Foxes and their runaway. At the end, Naomi Josten walked out, real in flesh and paper.

Impossible or not, Andrea vowed to never let her be anything less.


	26. andrea minyard and the yellow polka dot bikini

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: fem!andreil, part 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warning** for **nsfw** material. v v graphic lady lovin, yes.

Andrea loved skirts.

She never wore them, but she loved them.

One of her foster families had believed in the _good word of Christ_ to dictate every aspect of their life. They weren’t Christians so much as they were bigots; they had her in an ankle-length skirt and shoulders covering blouse every day for the month and a half she lived here, whereupon they discovered she kept a change of clothes in her middle school locker and that the clothes were not only black and much more skin revealing, but that they were modeled after her favorite rockstar. They branded her a satanist and had her back in the system within the week.

So. No. She didn’t like skirts on herself, but she loved them in general. The colors. The patterns. The varying lengths, the varying ties. How they moved, how they felt.

Naomi refused to wear anything but old jeans, baggy men’s clothing and moth-eaten sweaters. This was true until Andrea (while heavily medicated) decided to play a little game and swapped out her whole duffel bag’s worth of a wardrobe with the top picks from H&M. Naomi just about blew a gasket and undoubtedly had a panic attack, but she hadn’t thrown the clothing out. In fact, she’d worn them.

Andrea had spent the week following giggling into her hand, her mind five places at once and each spot having something to do with how Naomi looked in properly fitting clothes.

To be crude (a warning for someone other than Andrea), her breasts were amazing. She usually wore a sports bra because she was an Exy obsessed idiot, but when she wasn’t, when she was in the long-sleeved, fly-away collar shirt with a gold belt cinched at the waist that Andrea had picked out for her, it would have taken divine intervention to pull Andrea’s eyes from her cleavage.

Divine intervention came in the form of Abigail Minyard and Nicky Hemmick and the rest of the team, as Andrea was not one to show off her physical interests _too_ obviously. Her business was hers. She wanted Naomi to be hers.

Wait. No. That wasn’t how infatuation went.

She didn’t want Naomi. She just wanted to touch Naomi’s breasts.

Though more in line with Andrea’s usual mode of operation, she could tell a lie when she heard one, even if it was one she told herself.

Of course, as with all things in Andrea’s life, her infatuation didn’t go as planned.

And then it was a year, a full year, of knocking Riko off his perch and Naomi’s survival and Naomi’s reveal and _Naomi_ , and they went out to Eden’s Twilight to celebrate, and Andrea had to admit Allison Reynolds wasn’t the worst of the Foxy idiots. One, because she wasn’t bad on the eyes, though she wasn’t Andrea’s type at all. Two, because she had somehow convinced Naomi to wear a skirt.

It cut at a slant, a slit on the left leg showing more thigh than Andrew could remember Naomi ever doing before. High-waisted and not elastic, it put Naomi’s already fantastic figure on full display. Her shirt was high-collared, short-sleeved and tight, tight, tight. She wore the armbands Andrea had given her, because she always wore the armbands Andrea gave her, she almost always wore everything Andrea gave her, she’d wear Andrea if Andrea let her.

They find a table. They get drinks. Matt and Dan, Abigail and Katelyn, Allison and Renee, they disappear to dance. Nicky and Kevin nurse drinks with Andrea and Naomi a moment longer.

Andrea, who has waited an entire drive and then some, wonders absently how the skirt feels - it looked cotton - and, in the cover of the dark, curls a hand over Naomi’s knee.

Naomi blinks, her statement about Exy who-knew-what stuttering. Kevin asks her to repeat. She does.

The skirt is indeed cotton. The skin underneath is smooth and expansive; her leg jumps when Andrea walks her fingers higher, and Naomi’s sentence again stutters to a halt.

Kevin squints at her. “Are you alright?”

Andrea keeps her eyes on Kevin.

“I’m fine,” Naomi says.

Andrea flattens her hand on the inner curve of her thigh, scratches her nails against sensitive, thin skin. The club’s air is warm, but Naomi burns hotter, has always burned hotter, the space between her legs hottest of all, and Andrea doesn’t miss how she leans forward, how she shifts on her metal stool.

Andrea rubs a light circle into warm skin and brushes her knuckles against cotton underwear.

“Let’s dance,” Nicky, bored with drinks, begs Kevin.

“Yeah,” Naomi says, her voice breathy only to Andrea’s ears. “We’ll catch up.”

“You’ll dance?” Kevin asks, disbelieving. He glances to Andrea. Andrea raises an eyebrow as if to ask what he thought he was doing looking to _her_ for potential dancing.

“Always a time for firsts.” Naomi’s smile is oddly shy, too high on one side and too wobbly on the other, her shoulders creeping up. For a liar, she’s very obvious. But, then, Nicky wouldn’t be looking, and Kevin wouldn’t be expecting, so – maybe she just knows her audience.

Kevin squints at her again, suspicious despite both his alcohol intake and his general obliviousness. Andrea runs her hand back down Naomi’s leg, pressess her fingertips in, and asks, “Do you need help standing?”

Nicky guffaws. “This guy? Please. He’s barely touched the bar compared to his usual,” and drags Kevin by the arm to the dance floor.

Then it’s just them. Andrea, Naomi, and a table of empty glasses, surrounded by oblivious patrons.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Naomi hisses at her, elbows on the table and fingers intertwined around her soda can.

“You can go dance if you like,” Andrea replies, even and calm. She’s playing absently with Naomi’s skirt hem, rolling the fabric between her fingers, and she doesn’t intend to stop unless Naomi tells her to.

But the thing is – Naomi doesn’t. Naomi shifts in place again. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips. Her eyes are on the passing patrons.

“Tease,” she accuses Andrea, as if she wasn’t the very definition of that word.

It isn’t a yes.

Her legs spread a touch, her knee knocking Andrea’s. Andrea, for her part, feels her heartrate jump.

“Allison didn’t do too badly with the skirt,” Andrea says.

“I noticed,” Naomi says. “You like it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Are you going to leave me hanging?”

She dug her nails into the side of Naomi’s leg again, revealing in the clench of her gut, the heat pooling just below her stomach. “Maybe I will.”

“Andrea,” Naomi started, her lips put a scant breath from Andrea’s ear. The sound sent a shiver down Andrea’s spine: her name, soaked in longing.

As it turned out, Andrea did just want to touch Naomi’s breasts. She also wanted to touch everything else Naomi offered, and here, Naomi offered her head on Andrea’s shoulder, her fingers tight in the back of Andrea’s shirt, her legs spread and her fee hand holding her skirt down over Andrea’s hand.

To the curious passer-by, it would have been obvious what they were up to. To the average passer-by, Naomi was taking a break against Andrea’s side.

To Andrea, Naomi was wet and wanting, hot and slick against her fingers. Her breath puffed against Andrea’s shoulder, a noise caught halfway between a nervous giggle and moan eking out from her dry throat. The angle was a little awkward, but only in that it encouraged Andrea to go slow, two fingers crooked inside Naomi’s heat while she flicked a third against her clit.

“Andrea,” Naomi sighed, or moaned, her head tilted back to nose at the soft spot under Andrea’s ear. It spread goosebumps over Andrea; her chest felt tight, sensitive, the heat in her stomach spreading and encouraging her to move. Not fair. Very not fair. In retaliation, Andrea withdrew her two fingers and pinched a swollen clit between them, her middle finger’s knuckle rubbing _hard._

Naomi gasped. Her legs spasmed close, her hips rolled up. Andrea felt vindictated.

Then Naomi sucked her earlobe into her mouth, teeth grazing the shell of Andrea’s ear, and -

Andrea opened her eyes to Nicky staring at them from across the table.

Not wanting to deal with him distracting Naomi, Andrea gave him an unfriendly smile. He wasn’t too far gone - he averted his eyes and moved quick, grabbing glass with hardly a thumb’s width remaining, and left. He’d be telling _someone_ what he saw, though Andrea wasn’t sure who. It didn’t really matter, as what one Fox knew of a filthy, useless rumor, the others were bound to learn eventually.

Naomi’s laugh shuddered against her neck. Oh. So she had seen.

“Bathroom?”

“Yes,” Naomi gasped. “Yes, yes, yes.”

Eden’s Twilight wasn’t the lowest brow club in Columbia, but it was still a club. The bathroom’s light buzzed a washed out yellow, the stalls were painted a questionable black, and Andrea was positive she wasn’t the first to push a girl against the locked door and stick her hand up her shirt.

“We really need to work on your underwear,” Andrea tsked as she pushed the thin fabric over a worn white bra and undid at the bra’s back clasp.

“What’s wrong with my underwear?” Naomi demanded, though the commanding effect was lost in the whine and way her knees shook when Andrea pressed a hand in between her legs and tongued at her nipple.

“There are so many options,” pink skin tightened under her breath and attention, her hand pinching the one her mouth wasn’t all but latched to, “to match.”

Naomi was appreciative, one hand buried in Andrea’s hair, the other tight around her shoulder. She swore when Andrea nipped the skin over her collarbone, when she sucked a hickey just over that; she went up on her toes when Andrea twisted and pulled her nipple, when she dragged her nails down her side; her hand tightened in blond when Andrea sank to her knees.

She picked back up on the conversation then, her eyes fever-bright on Andrea. “Matching underwear? Us? That’s a little–”

Andrea barely kept from rolling her eyes. She smoothed the skirt up, once again admiring the ease and the asethetic, how the fabric bunched in her hand. How simple it was to pull Naomi’s underwear down. Skirts were easy access. When it came to Naomi, Andrea appreciated clothing that understood it was meant to be taken off.

“No, you idiot. Matching sets. Panties and bra. For you.”

Naomi, for the first time, frowned.

“You care?”

Not particularly. But she liked Naomi asking her for advice, and when it came to fashion, Naomi always came to her for advice.

(Her or Reynolds. Yet another reason she didn’t intend to get along with Allison.)

“Food for thought.”

“Is that a pun on eati– _ah._ ”

Andrea curled her hands around the backs of Naomi’s knees, slid them up, and nudged her legs apart. When she finally put her mouth where she wanted it, Naomi shuddered around her and obligingly held her skirt out of Andrea’s face, her other hand still tangled in her hair.

After a night of almosts, it didn’t take long. Andrea didn’t bother with tentative: she spread Naomi’s swollen lips and licked her clean. She dragged her tongue from bottom to top, sucked in her hardened nub, and slid a finger up to its knuckle, pulled back, and had a second join it. A little pull here, a little tug there, and a pace was set.

Above her, Naomi’s chest heaved, groan after sigh after hiss falling broken from her mouth. She canted her hips up and urged Andrea closer, the hand in her hair pulling her in even when there was no space left to go. Andrea sank lower, tilted her head back, her free hand cupped on Naomi’s not-ever-ever-ever-disappointing ass; Naomi all but sat on her, hips grinding down, and that was how Andrea knew she had Naomi on the brink.

True to form, Naomi’s voice raised, the echo in the bathroom beautiful. Her stomach tensed, the muscles under Andrea’s tongue jumping, her fingers coated in thick liquid. Naomi’s knees at last buckled; she fell pretty quickly after that into Andrea’s lap, her eyes hooded and limbs pliant.

She looked thoroughly fucked.

It was the perfect time to kiss her. Though Andrea must have looked red-faced and out of breath, her blood encouraging her to hurry up and put attention on herself, Naomi deigned to kiss her slow and languid, to taste herself on Andrea’s tongue and hum in nothing less than full approvement.

“You really like the skirt.”

Andrea, caught out from playing with tucking it under Naomi and smoothing out the edges, made a dismissive noise but didn’t let go.

“I could get another.”

“Do whatever you like.”

“In orange. And white.”

“ _No_.”

Her smile was too warm, too content, and all for Andrea.

It was the perfect time to kiss her again, so Andrea did.


	27. neil josten and the new year's crisis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: Mary didn’t take Neil on the run and Andrew is Nathan’s apprentice and he low-key enjoys it and Neil is afraid of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warning** for **graphic gore.**

At sixteen years old and branded to be the Perfect Court’s number three, Nathaniel Wesninski’s least favorite holiday was New Year’s.

The coaches the Moriyamas hired to teach their future Exy progidies didn’t believe in breaks, but Tetsuji Moriyama believed in family, and what the Master decreed, everyone scrambled to obey.

Jean belonged to no family. Kevin’s family was Riko at best, and the Master at worst. Nathaniel, however his contract may have read, bore the Wesninski name. When New Year’s came around and the more typical players of their junior league team left to see family, so did he.

His father hadn’t raised a hand against him since he was eleven - _leave him be, Lola; Tetsuji would throw a hissy fit if we damaged his goods_ \- but beatings had been the least of Nathaniel’s concerns for years.

Concerning was the psychotic midget his father had employed five years prior. On the record, his name was Andrew Williams; off record, he hadn’t been to his adopted family’s house in ages, and he was more and more a Wesninski as the time passed.

“Is that all you have?” Andrew clicked his tongue at Nathaniel’s door. “A little duffel bag stuffed with black? I swear, you get more pathetic every year.”

Nathaniel kept his head down, counted to ten, and made himself unpack his clothes even slower than before. Absently, he wondered how he was going to make it through the three day visit without punching Andrew if he was already counting to ten.

If Nathaniel had to name his problem with coming home, Andrew would be it. If Andrew had a problem, it was with control. That was: for a blond shrimp brought in as a runner and upgraded to the boss’s household by seventeen, he had too much of it.

“Hey. I’m talking to you,” Andrew said, his voice lofty and detached. That was how Nathaniel knew to look up and over – if he didn’t, Andrew was likely to jump from _hey, over here_ to _here’s a knife, and it’ll be **in** your stomach if you don’t look at me_.

Unsurprisingly, he got along with Nathaniel’s father very well; he was not unlike the heir Nathan had always wanted.

And he may not have enjoyed Nathan’s inner circle for years, but you could bet top dollar that every time Nathaniel showed up to the house, Andrew somehow also managed to be there. Not only that, but he _always_ managed to bother Nathaniel.

After holding his eyes for ten seconds too long, Nathaniel mustered up a sneer he’d seen Riko give the backs of journalist and sent it Andrew’s way. “You’re a needy fuck, you know that?”

Hands up, Andrew whistled, low and mocking.

“Ooh, big words from our big boy. Glad to hear your balls finally dropped.”

Nathaniel honestly didn’t even know why he was home for the holiday. Nathan couldn’t care enough to glance twice at him after grilling him on what _that boring bastard Tetsuji_ had been up to.

Actually, that did explain why he was home. That, and–

“Andrew?”

Andrew's eyes flicked sideways down the hall, and then he took a neat step back.

“Ma'am.”

The other reason took his place in the doorway, through her dark eyes took their time in moving from Andrew to her biological son. Mary Wesninski was a short but foreboding woman. To everyone and everything, she was cold beyond belief, her heart long closed to the world around her; to Nathaniel, she was the only reason he didn’t fight harder to stay and train alongside Jean through New Year’s.

“Don’t harass Nathaniel.”

Andrew cleared his throat. “I was just welcoming him home, ma'am.”

She gave him the stink eye, one eyebrow quirked and frown cut deep as a canyon. Andrew’s chin jerked up an inch, and then, just like that, he left.

Nathaniel wished he had half the presence his mother did. After the glamor of being told to play Exy every day had worn off– after learning what it meant to be _bought by the Moriyamas_ , about being told of his status as _something lesser_ and then watching his things, his personhood, his very name be trampled in an effort to teach him the lesson– after all that, he had dreamed once or twice of a universe where Mary hadn’t let him go through with the audition. A life where she’d taken him away, and they could have lived together, happier, without a bruise peeking out from under her shirt sleeve or the weight of what state he would find Jean in when he returned to the Evermore mansion.

He’d dreamed that once or twice. Then he’d turned thirteen, and grown the fuck up.

Now he was here for three days, and when his mom said, “You aren’t going to say hello to your mother?” he moved quick and sure to wrap her up in a hug.  
  
She pet his hair, once, twice, like a dream. She didn’t say welcome home or ask him how he was or how the Moriyamas were treating him. She would weasel those answers out of him without him knowing by the end of the holiday.

As far as celebrations went, Christmas was more to the Wesninski speed. New Year’s was the Moriyama’s, and big as his father was, Nathaniel had long learned Nathan did not call all the shots. It used to blow his mind that his father was not the be-all-end-all. Now he was sixteen, and happy just to have a moment alone with his mother.

“Don’t antagonize Andrew,” she warned him after he’d let go, her arm still around his shoulders. As far as third sentences after a year of not seeing each other went, Nathaniel could hardly think of worse. “He won’t be young forever.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She twisted his ear with a sharp reprimand for his tone, and shook her head at his exaggerated wince. It put a small smile on her face, though, and for that, he was happy enough.

Then she invited him for a walk around the local park, her plain clothes bodyguards hardly ten feet behind, and even if it was so cold his ears started to hurt and they would have a _family dinner_ (otherwise known as Nathan’s time to interrogate Nathaniel) afterward, she saw him for him, not the number on his cheek, not his last name, not anything but _him_ , and he knew he’d die for her, he really would.

Later, Andrew sat in on the _family dinner._ Nathan treated him better than he ever had his own son. Lola cooed over him. Romero joked with him. Jackson asked him to pour him his beer.

While Nathaniel wondered when that had happened, he didn’t dare ask. Better Andrew than Nathaniel.

His mother had eyes for him. That was all that mattered.

—

At nineteen years old and the starting backliner for the Edgar Alan Ravens, Nathaniel learned what his mother meant.

His father was put away for suspicions of tax evasion. Though his trial was stalled out by his lawyers, someone had to run the show back home. Officially, Lola headed the operations, and kept the political machine running smoothly; in reality, she had the brawn and brains but not the calculations, and she leant her ear to one Andrew Williams more often than not.

“You can’t go home for New Years,” Jean had hissed to him in the dark of their shared dorm, his two broken fingers (an _accident_ , claimed Robert; an accident made on Riko’s call) splinted and bandaged but barely healing. Nathaniel’s matching ones were in a similar state (what was done to one was, after all, done to the other). “The Spring championships are right around the corner.”

“I need to see my mother,” he’d replied, firm on this, at least. “I have the Master’s approval.”

“Nathaniel,” Jean started, and stopped. In French, he gritted out: “Return quickly.”

Riko had grown unpredictable. He was, Jean theorized, about to hit a breaking point, and while Jean did not say it, Nathaniel understood. Just one of them would not withstand whatever fall out Riko created.

Nathaniel, knowing this but also knowing his mother had been five months without his father and needing to know what she was like with a taste of what he imagined to be freedom, understood.

He promised he would.

Then he went home.

And what he found was his mother gone. According to Jackson, she’d taken Christmas at her brother’s house in the U.K.

What he found was the man responsible for alerting the police to Nathan’s white collar crime, trussed up like a pig on the dinner table. What he found was Lola mockingly questioning him, and him sobbing like any man aware of his encroaching death, and the honor of the first cut passed to Andrew Williams.

“Watch, junior,” Lola whispered into Nathaniel’s ear as Andrew took the knife to the man’s hand, the tip pressed under a nail, the blond’s face damingly blank even with a smile etched on. “This is what you could’ve been if you hadn’t been worth a pretty penny to Tetsuji.”

What Andrew does to the man does not rival Nathan’s work. Nathan is methodical but succicent and pointed. Andrew is slow and thorough, is bored, makes it into a lesson for not only the one being cut up but his audience. Andrew does not rival Nathan the Butcher: he is a beast of his own, all the control Nathaniel had seen in him honed to a single serrated blade.

At the end, the man is a twitching mess of sinew and blood. His eyes roll in a skinless face. He is alive, but barely. He is awake, but not for long.

“He’ll bleed out,” Andrew says, “like he tried to do to our business.”

Lola is approving. Nathaniel – is not here. His mind floats elsewhere, a coping mechanism he had learned after his fifth time in a front row seat to his father’s work. Nathaniel exists elsewhere until something warm and wet touches his chin - then he jerks back into reality, his eyes blinking into focus and meeting Andrew’s.

Bloody fingers tilt his chin up, the flat of a knife tapping against his throat.

(Lola and Jackson watch, maybe. Maybe not. The dying man is a mite distracting.)

“Are you here, junior?” Andrew tells him. No, asks him. For the first time that night, an emotion plays in Andrew’s eyes: curiousity, light and fragile, and left entirely in Nathaniel’s hands.

Nathaniel wants nothing to do with it or with him. Again, again, another New Year’s with Andrew seeking him out for no reason, only this time, it’s in the middle of a murder scene. He counts to ten, the smell of blood and excrement filling his nose. He should have listened to Jean. He should be with Jean. He should not be here. He despises the gentle touch on his chin far more than his father’s fist on his back, or Riko’s blade on his skin, or the other Ravens’ racquets catching him in the shin. He despises Andrew whole-heartedly. He despises Andrew with such gut-wrenching disgust that it chokes worse than the sticky smell of blood in the air.

“Are you happy with how far you’ve come?” Nathaniel whispers, his voice somewhow steady. “Congratulations. I’m sure you’re the Butcher’s pride and joy.”

Andrew’s curiousity grows.

Lola calls from beyond their pocket of the room, shattering the illusion of privacy Andrew’s presence had created. “Oi, Williams! It’s stopped sniveling, so come clean up your mess!”

Whatever Andrew sees in Nathaniel’s blank face, he apparently approves of, as he lets go without another comment.

Nathaniel does not see his mother that New Year’s, though she calls at midnight - drunk, with the sound of celebration in the background - to wish him a happy one. She doesn’t ask any questions - as their line is a public one, Nathaniel offers her nothing but what a son should say. In truth, he doesn’t breathe easy until he’s back in Edgar Alan. Compared to home, Riko’s unwieldy temper seems like a child’s tantrum.

—

At twenty and at his father’s funeral, Nathaniel wonders: _how?_

His mother is there. His uncle, too, of whom he had never met in person. Lola is not. Jackson is not. Romero is not. Their funerals are to follow.

Andrew Williams is not only alive, but attends. Nathaniel watches as his uncle puts a hand on Andrew’s shoulder. From an outsider’s view, it looks fatherly.

In an aside by the post-funeral buffet, Nathaniel’s mother tells him, “He’ll be your bodyguard. We can’t have what happened to your father happening to you. I won’t allow it.”

He isn’t sure of what to expect in a world where Kengo Moriyama and Nathan Wesninski are both dead, so he doesn’t object. He pretends he doesn’t feel Andrew’s dead gaze on the back of his neck, and accepts what his mother says.

—

Not a week after his and Riko’s fathers’ funerals, Andrew (who always, always watches their games from the stands, head tilted back and a cigarette in his mouth) comments that Kevin Day will be better than Riko Moriyama could ever hope to be. He says this loud enough for Riko, Kevin, Neil, Jean, and half of the Raven’s defensive line to hear.

In the dorms that night, Riko Moriyama shatters Kevin’s left hand.

Jean does his best to stitch the wounds closed, but they know it’s no use. The hand is mangled.

Kevin gets an odd look in his eyes: it edges defeat, it lines resignation.

Before he can do anything (a belt in between his teeth, sixty percent of his blood replaced with alcohol, Jean clipping the stitching wire and sitting back with a carefully blank expression that Nathaniel knows is five seconds into privacy from coming undone), Andrew appears at the doorway and throws three packed bags at their feet.

“If your King will hurt his favorite prince, he’ll do far worse to the court jesters. We’re leaving.”

Kevin, white-faced and drenched in sweat from barely mitigated pain, looks like Andrew offered what he hadn’t realized he’d been thinking.

Jean attempts a protest.

Andrew smiles lazily, the click of a switchblade loud in the room. “Did it sound like I was asking, number four?”

—

They leave immediately.

Andrew drives Kevin to a hospital on the Hatford’s dime and cover, leaving Jean and Nathaniel in the car for the brief time it takes him to check Kevin in. When Andrew returns, he explains that they have the Moriyama’s blessing to move schools as long as they forward a portion of their profits to the family that had raised them.

By _explains_ , Nathaniel means Andrew gave them the run down in two drawling sentences that his passengers barely grasp. He takes no questions. Nathaniel, for once, does not press.

Though Kevin’s immediately taken into surgery, no doctor promises he’ll recover the use of his hand. They think it was a drunken accident. They ask no further questions. The moment Kevin is cleared from the emergency ward, high on painkillers and packed into their SUV, Andrew asks Nathaniel, “Where to?”

“Palmetto,” Kevin slurs from the back. “They’ll take us.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Andrew replies, light as a feather. It spelled danger enough that Kevin, gone as he was, understood to shut up.

Nathaniel isn’t sure why Andrew brought Jean and Kevin along if he was only concerned about Nathaniel’s safety. In truth, he isn’t sure why Andrew is here at all. Andrew had been set up to inherit - or at least co-lead - a criminal empire. He should have hated Nathaniel; he should have left his mentor’s son to die as soon as he could; he should not be as relaxed as he is and had been, as if he was exactly where he wanted to be while sitting, useless, in the stands of a black-and-red stadium. He should not be so intent on protection, even if his job says he should be.

Nathaniel isn’t sure what his uncle had promised Andrew just as much as he isn’t sure why Kevin said _Palmetto_ , but he also knows they have no chance at making their names known in Exy if they join the Foxes.

Exy was the only thing that still made sense.

So Nathaniel says, “USC. The Trojans will take us,” and Kevin looks like he might protest but then he smiles the small, satisfied smile he always gets when he remembers their Captain, and that’s that. Nathaniel catches Jean’s eyes in the rearview mirror as Andrew turns the wheel for California.

Andrew drives twelve hours straight, stopping only for bathroom breaks, rest stop snacks, and gas. The SUV’s tires bumping and jostling over gravel is what wakes Nathaniel from the doze he’d been in against the passenger door’s window; a good thing, as otherwise, the keys Andrew tosses him would have taken out an eye.

“Your turn,” is the only explanation he receives before Andrew pops open his door. They swap seats in silence. In the back, Kevin doesn’t stir; Jean cracks his eyes open, but falls asleep again (or pretends to) just as fast.

Andrew spends the first hour of his time in the passenger’s seat making calls. One is obviously to USC’s coach. The next is to, if Nathaniel let himself trust Andrew for a second, Mary Hatford. The last three don’t last more than a minute each, and contain no instructions Nathaniel can even decipher, though he doesn’t try too hard.

After that, Andrew leans his head against the window, props his feet on the dashboard, and dozes in much the same way Nathaniel had. That is: from sheer physical need, not want.

It’s at that point Nathaniel can’t keep quiet any longer.

“Why are you doing this?”

Streetlights are non-existent on this stretch of Iowa. A passing truck’s lights catches the sliver of Andrew’s eyes; hooded though they are, the glint is sharp as a knife’s edge.

“One thing your father had right was loyalty,” is what Andrew says. “I’m curious if the trait’s genetic.”

It makes little sense.

At whatever face Nathaniel makes, Andrew sneers.

“Do you want me to call you interesting? Your ego’s big enough.”

Oh. So he’s _interesting._ He’s _curious._

In Nathaniel’s experience, that isn’t a good thing.

Andrew, eyes more awake, drops the sneer for his usual blankness. He cracks the window and fishes a carton and lighter from his pocket, muttering a, “I’m going to smoke,” as if Nathaniel needed the warning. It sounded to Nathaniel’s ears as borderline petulant.

He had watched this man carve up another. He understands there were many men he had not seen that this man practiced on.

He still despises Andrew. He’s sure of that.

But as far as remnants of his family went, Andrew wasn’t the worst.

He supposes he will learn to live with that.


	28. kevin day has a problem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: kevin/neil, with neil in a skirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warning** for **nsfw** material.

The skirt was not Neil’s idea. It was a drunk Allison’s, delivered after a knock on his door and a solemn request made with the skirt in hand for him to pose with it on. Neil knew better than to think the request was entirely random, especially as Allison required a picture before she left, but she entered and departed so quickly he hardly kept up with the exchange. If asked why he’d gone along with it, he would admit the homework he had was not one he enjoyed in the least, and Allison had promised him a report of the results of whatever it was she wanted the picture for.

The skirt was not supposed to stay on, but he had a deadline on his paper and Allison had distracted him enough that he didn’t bother changing again before getting back to work. 

Thus, Kevin returned to the dorm to the sight of Neil in a pleated, mid-thigh-length skirt so engrossed in his writing that he barely spared Kevin’s arrival a glance.

Kevin, clearing his throat twice to no avail (either in gaining Neil’s attention or clearing his throat), decided to make himself dinner. If he kept stealing glances toward Neil, it was no one’s business but his own. 

Except then Neil finished his paper, submitted it before the deadline with a quick breath out, got up, stretched (the guns-and-roses shirt that definitely belonged to Andrew riding up to show a sliver of stomach), seemed to realize he was still wearing the skirt, and went to the bathroom to change.

That made Kevin’s business Neil’s business, a change decided by Kevin.

“Where did you get that?” 

Neil paused mid-step, blinking over to Kevin as if he’d forgotten he was in the room. “Get what?”

Kevin gestured to his waist. 

Neil glanced down, glanced up – Kevin gestured again, throat clearing – and, after far too long, grasped what Kevin meant. “Oh. Allison brought it. She needed a picture.”

And then, also after far too long, Neil _looked,_ really looked, at Kevin. At the pink on his cheeks and the unusual aversion he had to looking Neil in the eyes. He seemed distracted. He was distracted. While Neil looked, Kevin mustered his courage, collected his jaw off his floor, closed the distance between them, and made an argument for Neil to stay as he was with his lips and tongue.

Admittedly, it worked.

Admittedly? Neil felt ridiculous.

He also, however, felt like he was learning a little something about Kevin’s tastes (a nice bonus as thus far Kevin’s tastes had revolved exclusively around Exy gear, which they could not indulge on a frequent basis because racquets were quite difficult to clean and the stadium’s janitor had nearly caught them twice already). That was, firstly: Neil. Secondly: Exy. Thirdly: skirts.

How did he know so? Because:

“You look amazing,” Kevin said with a hand smoothing down the front of the skirt, his other cupping what curve he found in the back. “Really. Stunning.”

Neil felt a shred of apprehension on sullying Allison’s skirt, especially as it had a nice silk lining and clearly very little use. 

Kevin felt no such apprehension. Kevin in the bedroom rarely held back, but the hand that immediately crept up Neil’s skirt to squeeze his ass and the, “Let me?” breathed between their lips was oddly reverent and desperate even for Kevin.

“Yeah,” Neil answered, and found his breath coming just as short. It hiked up a decimal as Kevin moved both hands to his ass, his arms drawing Neil flush against his front (and bent slightly backwards – damn tall bastard).  “Yeah. Yes. Okay.”

Kevin helped him out of his boxers, picked him up like it was nothing, support under a leg and on his back; he wrapped his legs around Kevin’s waist on instinct, but found himself quickly unwrapping as Kevin all but fell backward onto the couch.

Silk, Neil learned, felt whispery soft and borderline ticklish on bare skin. The folds fell neatly over both of their legs, Neil’s knees digging into the couch’s back, Kevin canting his hips up and pulling Neil’s hips down and building a heat, a good, solid heat, because ridiculous or not Kevin looked damned fine flushed and wanting.

Just as Neil was wondering if this would be it (and being quite fine with that, thank you, he was not picky), Kevin ruffled through a pocket and procured his lube. 

Silk, Neil learned, felt hot and slick against bare skin while Kevin worked him open. One finger, and their kissing broke down to Kevin’s whispered, “Good, so good,” in between light pecks; two fingers, hooked, and Neil shuddered, pressed back, Kevin following him down with a, “You like that, babe?”; three fingers, and Neil was just about ready to punch Kevin in the kisser, his forehead pressed to Kevin’s neck and shoulders hunched, back bowed, Kevin murmuring straight into his ear, “You like that, don’t you, you’re opening so nice, you’re a real sweetheart,” which was at once far more tender and far more crass than Kevin typically had words for in the bedroom.

Neil had to help him with his belt and fly, as it turned out he couldn’t much see around the skirt. With Kevin’s fingers still in him, Neil was happy to help.

The angle forced him to turn around, a move which reminded him he was still wearing both his shirt and the skirt. It took a moment to find his seat - it took Kevin grasping his hip and holding him still to angle properly, a slow descent that stoked the heat in his stomach into a wildfire. Once he was seated, feeling full and in need of friction, Kevin nosed behind his ear and sucked onto his neck, his hand on Neil’s hip refusing to let him do more than shift in place. 

Not fair. Not fair at all. He was the one wearing the skirt, he was the one with Kevin’s cock up his–

“Babe,” Kevin sighed, his fingers dipping into the swath of fabric around Neil’s erection but never straying to the point of Neil’s keen interest, “what do you want?”

“To move,” Neil growled, “you asshole.”

“Then move,” Kevin replied, that asshole.

Neil put a hand on Kevin’s knee to keep balance - his back bowed, his toes curled - and this time when he rose, Kevin let him.

He felt it quickly in his thighs, a slow burn that built as he drew himself up and dropped himself down. It was easier to simply roll his hips, but the feeling of Kevin sliding to his tip and then sinking back in was indescribable. 

Worse: when he at last deigned to pay attention to the wanting part of Neil’s anatomy, Kevin peeled back the skirt’s pleating to the silk lining, wrapped his left hand around lining and Neil’s dick, and let Neil’s movements drag the fabric along sensitive flesh.

It felt.

Good.

Really good.

Neil barely remembered this wasn’t his skirt.

Soon enough he gave up on anything like a slow rhythm and leaned back, his head lulled onto Kevin’s shoulder, his arms raised over his head to grasp both the couch’s back and Kevin’s hair. It stretched him all along Kevin’s front and gave the man a nice view of what he was doing to Neil with his hand. The sharp intake of breath was fully worth the hindered movement; the squeeze around his dick and thumb brushing over his slit was worth thrice that. 

The fabric was a slick mess, bunched as it was around Neil’s waist. Kevin’s hand was no less of a mess, his fingers coated in lube and precum.

“God, you’re a mess,” Kevin praised, and Neil shivered, rose, “down, down, fuck, you’re gorgeous,” sank down, rolled his hips, rose, “fuck, baby, babe, I,” and Neil gave his hair a tug and his ears a long, low moan, sinking down and clenching tight. 

He felt Kevin’s cock twitch, felt his hips jerk from the couch, and felt the rush of heat as he came inside Neil. 

He cursed Neil, a low, “Good boy, shit, you’re too good,” husked into his ear, the fingers around his dick tightening and stroking and Neil’s eyes squeezed close as he followed Kevin over the edge, thoughts derailed and body alight.

The skirt, he learned when he came down again, collapsed back into Kevin’s chest, Kevin yet to pull out or shift him off, was a crumpled, wet wreck. Silk did not stand well against staining liquids, apparently. 

And yet, Kevin made an attempt to smooth it out. _An attempt_ meant only that the pleats weren’t so ruffled, for then he wrapped one loose arm around Neil’s middle to keep him in place while he fiddled with the hem.

“You,” Neil informed him, “have a fetish.”

“I do not,” Kevin immediately replied, closer to himself without arousal clouding his brain. After a moment, Neil keeping silent to emphasis his disbelief, he admitted, “I miss Thea’s skirts. They feel great on the skin.”

Neil no longer had room to argue that one. Drowsiness from the late hour, paper and lingering sated pleasure kept him from fighting too hard to get up and change; he eventually shifted enough for Kevin to pull out of him, though the loss left him feeling oddly empty and stretched out beyond the usual, pleasant ache.  

He did wish Kevin would have let him get up when Andrew arrived home, took one look at the scene, raised a single eyebrow, and then, without replying to Kevin’s awkward, “Welcome home,” went straight for the bathroom.

(He came right back out with a towel and admonishment about the couch, both of which he delivered after giving Neil a kiss and Kevin a _Look_ , but that almost made it more embarrassing.)


	29. kevin day wishes he were somewhere else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: andrew/neil, dirty talk and borderline exhibitionism. poor kevin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kind of a part 2 to the "andreil in a bedroom that kevin arrives at" verse?? well. regardless, enjoy the smut.
> 
>  **warning** for **nsfw** material and **unsafe life practices.**

Road head was not, in theory or practice, a good idea.

But the drive to Atlanta was long, and they had just won a game, and that Wymack allowed Andrew to drive at all instead of taking the team bus was a rare, _only because you’ve ran every scrimmage I told you to,_ gift, and on the way out of the locker room Andrew had brushed his hand across Neil’s back and whispered in his ear, “I could have you on my lap the whole drive home. You always sit so pretty with my cock up your ass.”

“You’re far too short for that,” Neil had rebuffed once the blood returned to his face. “You can barely see over my shoulder as it is.”

Andrew had raised an eyebrow as if that was a challenge.

Neil shouldered his bag higher and kept his eyes forward. If Andrew slipped his hand into Neil’s back pocket and squeezed, at least everyone had the grace not to comment.

No, Neil could not sit on Andrew’s lap the whole ride home, or even part of the ride home, or even on the roadside on the way home, because they had offered Kevin a ride and they couldn’t tell him to beat it just because they were suddenly feeling frisky. Or, rather, they could, and Neil would, but Andrew strangely didn’t, and since it wasn’t technically his Maserati (and, Neil supposed, the Fox bus had already left), Neil kept his mouth shut.

Before starting the engine, Kevin in the back and Neil in the passenger seat, Andrew laid down the ground rules of no Exy talk for the five-odd hours they had to drive. He would take propositions for bathroom or snack breaks, but one word on the game they had just finished playing and won by a landslide, and they were hoofing it on their own.

Kevin glared and sulked, his high from the win lidded. Neil didn’t mind too much, though he’d lie if he said he was entirely pleased.

Within fifteen minutes of Andrew pulling out of the parking lot, Kevin sprawled and fell sound asleep in the back. Glancing back to the sight reminded Neil of his own aching joints; the door, however more comfortable for napping, was much less appealing than Andrew’s shoulder. In between the front seats, Neil tangled their fingers together. Eyes lidded and not bothering to stifle a yawn, Neil stroked his thumb mindlessly over Andrew’s knuckles, the car, the people and the security of another Fox victory washing over him.

That was when Andrew murmured, “I could crash and he wouldn’t wake up.”

Sleepy, thoughts looping slowly to what Andrew had said on the way out of the locker room, Neil mumbled back, “Don’t test that.”

“This road is a straight shot – I’ve driven it before. The only risk is me falling asleep.”

Neil thought about that.

“You could help with that,” Andrew said, eyes on the road.

Thinkg about that, too, Neil lifted his head to glance back at Kevin. He really was sound asleep.

(It felt a little dirty even thinking about it, on the road and with another in the backseat.)

“Your lips,” Andrew mused, “my cock.”

“You’ll get us killed.”

Andrew clicked his tongue. “You aren’t that good.”

 _That_ cinched it.

Wakefulness returning, Neil disentangled his hand to stroke down Andrew’s leg. Calloused fingers curled into the inseam. Black denim bunched. Andrew huffed.

“What do you want?” Neil asked, casual as anything, voice barely a whisper.   
“I have to spell it out for you?” Andrew leaned forward, shifted back, one arm draped over the steering wheel and the other hand on top of Neil’s. “Lazy.”

Stretching farther across the divide, Neil nosed just below Andrew’s jawline. Eyes closed, the engine’s purr radiating from his feet to his fingertips, he tasted Andrew’s jump in pulse and decided, _fuck it._

Within minutes, Andrew flipped on the cruise control.

—

“Just the tip. Good, good. You look so good.”

Neil drew back enough to say, voice wrung thin from an ache in his jaw and insistent pressure against his jean zipper: “Eyes on the road, Minyard.”

The hand in his hair tightened. “Take it all, Josten, and I’ll think about it.”

The guidance wasn’t necessary, but it was appreciated. Neil resisted it at first, because that was what he did: he flicked his tongue at the slit to hear Andrew’s catch in breath, he looped two fingers around the base and threatened to squeeze. His other hand was busy stabilizing him across the seats: the position really wasn’t the best, but he made due. In any case, Andrew had long forbade him from touching himself without command.

The next time Neil teased at taking Andrew’s length, tongue flattened and cheeks hollowed around just the tip, Andrew tsked and pushed.

Easy as melted butter, Neil opened his thraot and took him down.

The car jerked under them, Andrew’s foot twitched forward on the gas pedal. Adrenaline spiked through Neil’s veins, danger singing in his ears and prickling his skin into goosebumps.

“I could pull over,” Andrew mused, as if he wasn’t driving a half-million dollar death machine while Neil sucking him off. His voice was so controlled, so casual and easy, Neil knew he had Andrew teetering on the edge. “Right in the middle of the highway. I’d fuck your mouth raw, then I’d take you apart on the hood. I’d make you scream. You’d like giving everyone a show, wouldn’t you? – Did I say you could stop?”

The hand in his hair tightened again, pressure put to push his head down. Neil dragged a deep breath through his nose as he swallowed Andrew back down, his scant concentration focused on relaxing his throat. The burn in his throat felt nice; his lungs demanded air, a desperate fire flaring under his ribs, fingers tingling and toes curling in his boots.

Over him, Andrew’s voice dropped an octave, a hiss rippling through his words like strands of molten gold.

Neil wasn’t sure he would be able to touch himself when Andrew said; he _hurt_ , he was so far into it.

“They can watch, but you’re mine. They’d know that. I’d–” a breath, “- work you open, slowly. One finger. Two. Finally, three. You’d beg. You’d be a mess, legs spread like a whore’s. Hey, up. Breathe. There. Good.”

Leather creaked under the hand curled on the wheel. His other threaded through Neil’s hair, caught on snarls and softly tugged them out; Neil, cheeks red and eyes wet, pressed his face to Andrew’s clothed leg and did as instructed: breathed. He kept his hand working while he did, grip tight on every pull.

He slipped as the car’s weight slid, Andrew taking his lane shift a touch too sharp.

Righting himself with his heart in his throat, his adrenaline up, his mind on the cars around them and Kevin in the back– _Kevin in the back,_ and Andrew was talking like that. Clamping down on disbelief, Neil waited for Andrew to straighten out before swallowing half of his dick down again.

Andrew’s legs spread by centimeters, his back bowing and stomach flexing under his black shirt. The hand in Neil’s hair slid down to his neck, palm cupping his nape and fingers rubbing gentle, pleased circles in his short, soft curls.

“Then, after that, I’d, ah,” a pause, slight enough to be a sigh, one of Andrew’s knees pressing against the door, “take you apart, three fingers and my tongue, lick you clean.”

Neil moaned. The sound carried, purring right along with the engine.

Andrew shuddered. His cock jumped in Neil’s mouth, swelled. He was close. He was so close.

“ _Andrew!_ ”

A car horn blared. Neil slipped, couldn’t catch himself, and smashed into the dashboard as Andrew swerved hard to dodge an ugly green Subaru. The Maserati jumped and bounced as two of its wheels hit gravel. By some miracle partially to Andrew’s skill at and experience in crashes, the car didn’t flip. It did teeter and give its passengers a brief look into whiplash, but then it bounced its way back onto solid road and roared into normal traffic.

Behind them was a mess of honking horns and angry drivers. Behind Andrew and Neil in specific, Kevin cursed up a storm from the floor.

It was a miracle no persons or persons’ sensitive genitalia were harmed. When Neil righted himself (with a new bruise along his arm from the radio dial), he noticed Andrew had yet to tuck himself away.

(Or, really, lose any interest in continuing their proceedings.)

“ _I am right here!_ ”

Oh, right. The one who had saved their asses.

“Thanks, Kevin, for keeping an eye out,” Andrew said.

Neil did not think that helped.

Kevin agreed. He repated, “ _I am right here_ , and you two were– were– _we nearly died._ We should have died! What the fuck! Why are you trying to kill me?”

“It’s nothing personal.” Andrew paused. “Go back to sleep.”

“No! Fuck, no! Pull over!”

Without argument, Andrew did.

Kevin exited the vehicle with a rant and near-lecture on the dangers of what they had just attempted _while he was sleeping._ The lectures broke up because he could never directly say what they were doing, as whenever he got close, his eyes dropped to Andrew’s undone fly and the sight riled him up into a sputtering mess all over again.

“I am calling Wymack,” he told Andrew while looking anywhere but at Andrew. He fetched his cell phone from his pocket, dropped it, angrily scooped it up, and shook it in Neil’s direction. “You two can die on your own time. Leave me out of it. God, fuck, shit. This is the second time. _I was right there._ ”

“You sleep like the dead,” Neil reminded him.

“He has a fair point,” Andrew agreed.

“I hate you both,” Kevin snarled.

“Can you hate us from farther away?” Neil asked. “We have business to finish.”

“ _Ugh,_ ” Kevin said, in despair, “thrill seekers,” and turned to stomp his way to the nearest landmark. In this case, it was a fast food restaurant that surely served nothing Kevin would eat.

“He’ll binge on McParfaits.” Andrew predicted as he brought the car back onto the highway. “He’ll be fine.”

Andrew drove them a block down and into a quiet, secluded road without street lamps or lit houses, and fulfilled his promises. Thoroughly.


	30. andrew minyard is as they say

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: in a world where what someone believes about you is written on your skin, Andrew and Kevin make their deal.
> 
> ( while trying to write kandreil, I dabbled into the scene where Andrew promised Kevin protection. had to give it an au element because that's who I am, but yes, please enjoy this random snapshot. )

“Ooh, what’s this?”

An elbow caught Andrew in the ribs; _impressive_ , he thought, his breath catching between his teeth. Kevin, whose shirt sleeve Andrew had been tugging upward, leaped forward and spun on a heel, his right hand unraveling and yanking the sleeve over the cast’s awkward bulge. Shoulders back, _feet forward!_ , chin _up, up, up!_ Like a soldier fighting the good fight; like a soldier coming home to an empty house, his stiff upper lip all he had left.

“Leave it be,” the soldier barked.

“It’s okay to cry,” Andrew informed him helpfully, “if someone’s hurt you.”

“It’s private,” he argued.

“The words are not about you,” he said, “it’s about them. And what they believe.”

His expression said, _What am I but a sum of my actions? What am I but what another sees?_

“You can be so boring sometimes.” Andrew pressed his fingers first into the tender spot under his ribs, and then - more tentatively - the clothed back of the elbow that had put it there. “Let me see.”

His expression said, _I’d rather not._

His mouth said, “If you aren’t going to be useful, leave me be.”

Two weeks into freedom, and Kevin Day craved the cage. He had arrived a skittish thing, a creature held upright and straight-backed thanks only to the Coach that had a firm grip on his scruff. Oh, he played a good game of the high and mighty: he scoffed at their training regime, he ceaselessly insulted their methods under the guise of _suggested improvements,_ he pestered, he bothered, he hissed and he whined and he moaned and he groaned. He was never far from a Fox, whether they wanted him there or not.

But Andrew had long learned to smell fear (it was true - Nicky knew), and in terms of strength and distance, Kevin stank no less than a startled skunk. 

It grew tiresome. Pride, Kevin’s ball and chain, threatened to go before his fall -- but what a long fall it was, and for so little reason. 

His broken wrist was an accident! - so he claimed. 

You had been kicked out! - cried every pathetic twist to Kevin’s mouth and the resignation along his shoulders at being an assistant coach. 

There was something more to be found. Something niggling and begging to be found. Something interesting, something fun. The Kevin Day he had met in a detention center would not have been caught dead as anything less than a Raven, and a Fox was far, far less. The Kevin Day he saw here was far, far out of his element, and he was fast losing faith that if he _just tried hard enough, everything would be fine! Tomorrow will be a better day!_

Kevin asked, “Since when do you believe that?”

Ah. His tongue had once more gotten ahead of him. It wasn’t the worst part of the mandated medication, as it did end in some of the best disagreements.

“I never said I believed it.”

Kevin frowned. “Then why did you tell me it?”

Boring. 

Boring, boring, boring. Time for a new topic. 

Andrew flicked the forearm covered by sleeve and, under that, cast. The plaster felt solid as exposed bone. 

Kevin, at the sound of it, flinched.

“It’s a who, isn’t it? You’re not one for the big picture.” Oh. _Oh._ “Maybe it’s a where. Are you afraid of going back?”

Kevin, at his words, flinched.

He opened his mouth to protest. Andrew cut him off. He felt his smile fade. He felt himself promise, “I’ll protect you,” and promise, “you won’t ever have to go back.”

Kevin would have none of it.

 _You’re out of your mind,_ he said, and backed away. _You can’t._

Lightning quick, Andrew reached and snagged his shirt. He reeled him in - the proud man left to wallow in the Palmetto pits, and now dragged to their short goalkeeper’s level. A laugh bubbled up. Andrew shoved it down, down, _down_ , and focused on everything he knew to be true.

“Tell me why I can’t.”

\---

Science had yet to share with humanity what gifted them with a running feed of what others thought of them. Everyone knew that much: one’s reputation was clear to anyone who could read, as traits and qualities appeared on one’s skin with the size and prominence to match the strength of another’s conviction. If a person believed their lover’s intentions wholeheartedly, **honest** or **truthful** had the slightest chance to appear; if a town believed its gossip about the newly divorced father of two, he would absolutely find a word worth crying about on his body; if a nation believed you capable, you would see that word every time you looked in the mirror.

When Andrew looked in the mirror, he thought: _good. As it should be._

\---

Years previous, Kevin Day had visited him in a detention center and, after just one game, caused the faintest word to appear under Andrew’s wrists. 

He had tried cutting it off. It and the skin attached had, sadly, grown back.

Then the orderlies had grown concerned, and he’d grown tired, and Riko said, “He won’t even practice. There’s no point to talent without effort,” and Kevin had agreed, and they’d left.

The word had taken a month to fade completely. Kevin’s stubbornness, at least, hadn’t changed.

\---

The night Andrew made his offer was not the night Kevin told him of the Moriyama family. The night to follow was not, either. Nor the night after that. Nor the night after that.

A good thing Andrew was so patient. Life was the long game; comparatively, Andrew blinked, and Kevin’s frayed nerves had snapped. 

Andrew blinked, and he’d invited Kevin to Columbia.

Andrew blinked, and the fog was gone. 

They stood in the kitchen of the house Nicky had bought and dreamed of rebuilding a family in. Aaron and Nicky had left for their beds, both tripping and stumbling their way through the hall and into their rooms. Andrew stood, sober as the day he’d nearly killed four men, by the sink. He filled a glass of water and contemplated what he was going to do with it. 

At his side, listing dangerously to the left, Kevin Day fiddled with the straps on his wrist brace. He wasn’t as drunk as he had been in the club. He wasn’t going to like the morning if he didn’t have a glass or three of water before bed.

The rip of velcro cut through the stillness of a three a.m. kitchen. His movements were sloppy. His words were even worse as he began a story about a King and his petty jealousy.

Kevin didn’t use those words, of course. He said, _I don’t know why Riko did it,_ and _I don’t know what happened,_ and _I didn’t see it coming._ It was then Andrew learned just how much his dedication to his sport forced him into the dark about the world around him. It wasn’t a pitiable fact; it simply _was._

At the end, he stretched the fingers of his left hand with a wince. The skin looked thinner and the bones not as sturdy, as if the years he spent using it meant nothing after a few months of mandated rest. Success was a fragile thing. Riko Moriyama had wanted Kevin to lose his grip on it.

But the shattered wrist wasn’t where Andrew’s eyes lingered.

Black and bold and big, the word stamped along Kevin’s inner arm dripped with hatred and conviction and everything that damned a man to exile. If it had been there for years as some words were, it would have been covered in the many Exy-obsessed articles about what made a champion (that was, the words that showed up on Kevin Day’s skin).

And thus.

“Ravens,” Andrew guessed, “they’re birds of a feather.”

It rattled him, it was not what he wanted to hear, _it was the truth._

Riko Moriyama knew his brother, blood or not. Nothing and no one had come for Kevin Day; the words on his skin and silence at his side would drive him back to the Nest faster than any death threat. 

Did that make him a coward?

Maybe.

That night, Kevin admitted to himself and to Andrew, “I need help. I want to stay.”

Those words sealed their deal. In celebration, he passed the glass of water to Kevin. “Drink all of this.”

Pushing the glass away, Kevin shook his head. The movement swayed him dangerously to the left; Andrew steadied him, his hand wrapped over his broken wrist and its broken sentiment. With his hand in the way, **WARD** stared them in the face.

Had Andrew made himself into a warden?

Maybe.

He said, light as a feather, “I wasn’t asking.”

Right hand shaking, Kevin took the glass.

\---

Kevin said, “I’ll find you something to live for.”

Andrew said, “Why are you so full of shit?”

Kevin said, “To make us equal. For what you’ve given me.”

Andrew said, “Your pride will be the death of you. Who said I needed anything?”

Kevin pressed, “That isn’t a no.”

Andrew laughed. “I suppose it isn’t.”

That very same night, Kevin signed on as the Foxes’ starting striker. Andrew could hear Seth’s wail of anguish from Wymack’s office. 

Andrew said, the haze in his mind making him feel charitable, “This isn’t the worst development.”

Kevin said, “I practice six nights a week.”

That was that. He didn’t need to ask Andrew to be there. Even if Riko hadn’t been alive and well, it took no genius to see how Kevin’s nerves mended with someone - anyone - at his side.

And in any case, simply existing was a state Andrew had perfected in his early teenaged years. He fancied himself a master, though he was self-aware enough to admit his mortality. It wasn’t a concern: in many ways he resembled, ever fated to escape death. He would carry it to whomever threatened his, instead. It made time pass quicker. Life wasn’t quite as tiresome as it had been.

Soon after he became Kevin’s shadow (or Kevin became his; it was hard to tell in the beginning), the pale word of yesteryear returned, a faded and fragile mark of one man’s opinion standing against the world’s. Compared to the **MONSTER** screamed in blocky black across his back, the tiny scribble under his wrist may as well have been nothing.

It was, he decided, nothing. Andrew treated it accordingly.

\---

The amount of writing Kevin Day, Exy’s prodigy and founding mother’s son, had on his skin shocked the Foxes.

Andrew wondered what world they had grown up in. 

Kevin Day had been groomed all of his life to be a star. Of course his reputation preceded him: of course the block of text on his back was thick enough to be mistaken for an inkspill with _charitable_ and _proud_ and _friendly_ leaking from the sides, of course **talented** scrawled across his shoulder, of course **hero** traced itself up one side of his neck while **fake** raced up the other. Of course his qualities didn’t add up to a whole person, but a dozen persons. He was a celebrity. People believed what they wanted. Many people bore many hopes and grudges regarding Kevin Day.

But for every Matt Boyd and his honest, “How do you even find yourself in that mess?” there was another whose surprise and discomfort careened into snickers and wolf whistles.

The first time Kevin joined them in the locker room as another Fox gearing up to play, a fifth-year nearly pissed himself laughing.

“Take a look at this hotshot! Does that seriously say _hero?_ Oh, my god. Palmetto must be real fuckin’ lonely without all those groupies falling over you. Do you want us to kiss your feet and call you the best? Would that make you feel more at home?”

Seth, a fourth-year, called from the back, “How the mighty fuckin’ fall, hey?” 

Kevin glanced at his shadow, his bodyguard, his makeshift friend and protector. Andrew ignored it. These were petty insults; he needed to get used to them.

After a moment, Kevin got the message. He headed for the showers, towel over his shoulder, chin up and eyes forward. 

Nicky, bless his heart, tried to cut in. “I know you’re as interested in reading Kevin’s body as I am, but trust me. You don’t woo men into your bed by insulting them.”

Seth’s noise of disgust matched Aaron’s. 

Another sneered. “Nasty. Bet you faggots already have each other memorized.”

Matt, Andrew noticed, spent an awful lot of time with his head in his locker. It was probably smart.

As Kevin was forced to shoulder past the fifth-year that first laughed, he reached to cuff the back of his head. “Hero’s a croc of shit, but _coward?_ That looks about--”

He didn’t finish his sentence. He did as much as he had only because pulling off a goalkeeper’s armor took longer than a striker’s. 

When Wymack asked why his fifth year defensive dealer would need to be benched for the next week due to three broken fingers and a sprained wrist, Andrew told him, “Whoops. The shower tiles are so slippery.”

No one brought up the words scrawled across Kevin’s skin after that. 

(The **MONSTER** grew, and grew, and grew.)


End file.
